


Clues on How to Stay

by zedpm



Series: Team Bobcats [1]
Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Human, American Sign Language, Autistic Janet, Blanket Permission, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Characters of Color, Coming Out, Eleanor Shellstrop: Human Disaster, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Families of Choice, First Time, Friendship, Gen, High School Musical References, Homophobia, Lesbian Tahani: A Public Relations Nightmare, Love at First Sight, Nonbinary Janet, POV Third Person Limited, Panic Attacks, Pining, Platonic Soulmates, Present Tense, Simone is Always Right, canon-typical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-23 08:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17077118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zedpm/pseuds/zedpm
Summary: or,Tahani Al-Jamil: The Penultimate DisappointmentTahani wants to piss off her parents. Eleanor wants to put a ring on Tahani’s stupid perfect finger. It's a match made in the Good Place.





	Clues on How to Stay

**Author's Note:**

> love & credit to N.K. Jemisin. I drew heavily from the style of her _Broken Earth_ trilogy in this fic, because it fucking rules. if you haven't read her work, please [check it out!](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2917917.N_K_Jemisin) it's literally, like, mind-bogglingly good, y'all.
> 
> I told myself I wasn’t allowed to finish the extremely self-indulgent rarepair au I started in november until I wrote & published some Eleanor/Tahani. two weeks later, I had this extremely self-indulgent monster of a fic and a whole related verse in the works. Hope you enjoy, and happy new year!

> i.  
>  I am looking for clues  
>  on how to stay a woman, not  
>  a middle-aged woman  
>  who sings all those girl-group lyrics  
>  over the dash  
>  but a woman since  
>  I’ve earned that title over years of (honey, you know—)  
>  wicked repartees among my girlfriends and boyfriends.  
>  Here’s the subtext:  
>  the twenty-year-olds  
>  at poetry readings  
>  are so exquisite they might be fashioned of wax, even  
>  the blemishes. I realize now how lithe I was when I thought  
>  I was the ugly daughter—how  
>  tremulous my beauty. I didn’t know […]  
>  The war was nearly over.
> 
> ii.  
>  waxing
> 
> —Kimiko Hahn, “Wax”

 

 

 

_a November Thursday, green-leaved  
Eleanor’s in love_

Eleanor notices the woman the moment she steps into the Neighborhood, of course she notices her, fucking everybody notices her. Legs like a swimsuit catalog, neck like a Zale’s mannequin, hair like an Amazonian princess, she’s impossible to ignore, not that Eleanor wants to. She’s had her eye on a guy who she thought might be a postal worker, but Possible Mailman flies out of her mind, replaced by smooth brown skin and curvy hips and dark, sharp eyes. There’s always her Adderall-addled ex-boyfriend as a last resort, but Eleanor has a good feeling about this woman, about how she’s ignoring the predatory circling of the jackal scavenger losers masquerading as men. About what her neck might taste like beneath Eleanor’s tongue.

She hops up from her barstool and approaches, baring her teeth full-on Arizona dirtbag style at the men as she cuts through the cloudy, neon-lit distance separating her from the woman. Most of them slink away. Eleanor glares at the ones who don’t, meaner this time, and they retreat. Eleanor’s not trying to claim the woman or something, but it’s already beyond obvious that nobody in here is worth her time. Except, maybe, hopefully, Eleanor.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” Eleanor says. The woman turns to her and blinks. “You lost? Because that dress looks about five grand above this dive’s paygrade.”

“Thank you,” the woman says, “but I’m not lost.”

She has a fucking British accent, of course she has a British accent, Jesus fuck, Eleanor’s already half in love. “Can I buy you a drink, then?”

“I wouldn’t want to take from your limited supply of money,” the woman says, and wow, she’s kind of a bitch. That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, though. They might just fuck, after all, though if Eleanor manages to make something more happen, well, being kind of a bitch adds variety if nothing else. It’s probably time for Eleanor to accept that bitchery is just the tradeoff that comes with being a hot woman—there’s only so many times per day that you can get catcalled before you just start being instinctively cruel to everyone and everything that tries to get your attention. And it’s a definitive improvement on mens’ sacrifice for sex appeal, which in Eleanor’s experience is the presence of a functioning human brain.

“Well, you wouldn’t be,” Eleanor says. “The bartender’s my uncle, basically, so I drink free here. And you look…” She doesn’t want to say like she could use some company, even though if she’s wandering into random bars she obviously could. “Like you had a rough day,” she finishes. “I’m a good listener,” she continues, which is a blatant lie—she isn’t, at all, whatsoever; pretty much the opposite, in point of fact. “What’s your pleasure, beautiful?”

The woman smiles a little. “Sangria, then.”

“Gotcha,” Eleanor says. “Grab us a booth, would you?”

“Okay,” the woman says. She takes a minute to start moving, seemingly still unsettled by God knows what. Eleanor’s not particularly sympathetic.

The Neighborhood is _her_ bar, hers and her friends’, because it’s walking distance from the house and because of Michael, who tends bar and is the closest thing she has ever had to a male role model, though he’s admittedly a pretty shitty draw. But he always has drinks for her and fights off stupid guys when they’re a little too pushy for Eleanor’s (according to Janet, who’s been teaching her, because Janet knows everything) blue belt jiu-jitsu. And furthermore he tolerates Jason’s antics (well, tolerate is kind of a weak word—Eleanor’s pretty sure he’s incited and/or ignited at least three fires) and on her birthday last year, he closed out the whole bar and convinced ASU to give Chidi an extra day to turn in his grades so they could get properly hammered.

Eleanor tries to slip Michael a fifty when she gets to the bar, but he indulgently refuses. He’s her second favorite man, honestly, when she limits her list to men she’s actually met. (Stone Cold Steve Austin, when included, of course bumps him down to number three.) “Sangria for the hottie back there, fancy as you can make it, and a mojito for me.” She leans up and kisses his cheek. “You’re the best, Michael.”

“Good luck with her,” says Vicky meanly. She’s Michael’s one employee, and Eleanor absolutely loathes her. She propositioned Eleanor one time and has never gotten over the rejection. The grudge-keeping is more or less in line with what Eleanor knows of her character, which is why Eleanor didn’t fucking screw her in the first place, but also, at this juncture, patently ridiculous. Like anybody in fucking Arizona or the continental United States or the whole entire Western hemisphere is worth Eleanor’s attention when the woman is back there being beautiful and mysterious and a little bit mean?

“Good luck with developing social skills ever,” Eleanor tells Vicky. “I hear it’s difficult in middle age.”

“I’m twenty-seven, you bitch!” she yells, but Eleanor is gone, gone, gone.

She slides across from the woman, neatly depositing the sangria in front of her, and she says, “Thank you,” and then, “I didn’t catch your name, I’m afraid.”

“Eleanor,” she says, and takes the woman’s hand, just holding it for a moment. “What about you?”

“Tahani Al-Jamil,” the woman says, then pauses like Eleanor’s going to react somehow.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Tahani,” she says after a beat. She kisses the top of lovely, lovely Tahani’s hand, and then releases it. “What brings you all the way to Phoenix?”

“Oh, just a fundraiser,” she says airily, “for a bee conservation research cluster. You know.”

Eleanor doesn’t know; the only charity she ever donates to is the Get Eleanor Drunk fund. But she says, “Sure. And why are you in some run-down old bar instead of with your fellow philanthropists?”

Tahani deflates a little. “I wanted to meet the local flavor,” she says unconvincingly.

Eleanor doesn’t even bother with _that_ obvious lie. “Sure,” she says again. “And why are you in a dirty, skeevy old dive and not with your… contemporaries?” Eleanor doesn’t like implying that she’s somehow a lesser or different kind of person than Tahani because of money, but can’t seem to summon, in the moment, a more polite way to say _all those bougie fucks._

Tahani slumps. “They’re all so bloody boring,” she whines. “And judgemental, and _boring._ All they want to do is snort cocaine and brag about their latest Academy Award. It’s like, oh, wow, really, Ben Affleck? You think _Batman vs. Superman_ should have gotten a better critical response? I think you should try being in a real movie!” She sighs and takes a sip of her drink, indignance giving way to despondency. “Sometimes I just feel like… there has to be more to life than that.”

 _Poor little rich girl,_ Eleanor sneers internally, instinctively, but something about her sincerity really is, well, _real,_ and something in Eleanor responds in turn. Fucking Chidi and his ethics lessons. “There’s definitely more, yeah,” she says. She really does want to get laid. But she sighs and thinks about her friends and who she would be without them (who she _had_ been, without them), and she says, “Maybe I can introduce you to some real people.”

Tahani blinks, and she looks like a fucking forest nymph, or maybe a fae or a fairy or, like, an elf. Some kind of ethereal mythical creature. It’s gotta take literal magic to get her eyelashes to look like that. “Oh?”

Eleanor checks her phone. “It’s late,” she says. “And everybody has to work tomorrow, but… how long are you in town?” Today’s Thursday; if she’s here until the weekend, Eleanor can pull the gang together. (She refuses to call them the Bobcats. Jason may have won the war, but Eleanor will win the battle. A pyrrhic victory, maybe, but still better than no victory at all.)

“Until Sunday,” Tahani says. Perfect.

“Okay, so,” Eleanor says. “Let’s drink some more, and you can tell me your life story so I know how dire this whole”—she waves her hand vaguely at Tahani’s person—“situation is. And then tomorrow let’s get a real dinner. You can treat me, you’re rich.” Tahani inclines her head, an amused smile on her lips. “And then Saturday, come by the house, and I’ll introduce you to the fam.”

“Thank you,” Tahani says, looking sort of windswept. “Er, were you serious about hearing my life story?”

“As a heart attack. Tell me everything, gorgeous.”

So Tahani does. Drink #1 reveals that she’s a rich heiress (unsurprising) who loves art (also unsurprising) and ballet (still unsurprising). Drink #2 is a long, scattered summary of her philanthropic accomplishments (impressive, but boring). Drink #3 is a very dry family history—her family moved to Britain before the partition, got richer (how, she doesn’t specify, but Doug Shellstrop’s voice whispers: _anybody who’s got money’s got blood money,_ and he was a dick but that was true at least), and now they have so _much_ money that they’re professional rich people. She says her dad is an investor, but Eleanor’s about 93.2% positive that’s a fancy way of saying that he’s a professional rich person who gambles via the stock market rather than at the craps table.

Drink #4 is where it gets interesting, finally, thank Christ. Tahani drops the stuffiness and gets down to the nitty-gritty grisly bones of the piece: she hates her sister passionately, in a way that Eleanor thinks probably means she wants desperately to be loved by her. She can’t get her parents to approve of her no matter what she does. She admits to Eleanor, with a kind of ugly darkness in her tone, that much as she does care for the “less fortunate,” she’s not particularly drawn by any of their causes; she just doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to do, with infinite money and infinite time and no passion at all, anywhere inside her. It’s as heartbreaking as it is disturbing.

She keeps name-dropping the whole time, until Eleanor, exasperated, says, “I know you know people, hot stuff. You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

Tahani’s cheeks turn a rather pleasing shade of pink. “Was I?” she asks. “Oh. Apologies.”

“Go on,” Eleanor urges, and Drink #5 is the drink of stories—constant judgement, eternal everpresent not-enough-ness, ugly regret. Eleanor sort of wants to take her home right now and wrap her up in blankets and her body and never let her go until she feels like enough, but knows that’s probably not the best call in the world, not if she doesn’t want to scare Tahani off on day one. Although she’s not the one who told a stranger in a bar her life story after a drink, a gentle touch, and an intimation of kindness, so maybe it would work out in the end. Eleanor’s not reckless enough to try, though. This already matters to her.

They attempt a Drink #6 (well, Tahani does—Eleanor hasn’t exactly been keeping pace), but Michael cuts them off. “Go home, Eleanor,” he says gently, and, well, if he says it’s time to go home then she guesses it is. She gets Tahani’s number and makes her install Snapchat on her phone and waits with her until the cab (Eleanor didn’t even know Phoenix still _had_ cabs) arrives.

“Tomorrow, then?” Tahani says, and her tone is casual, but Eleanor’s just listened to her entire life story (prognosis: pretty fucking dire), and she can hear the prickly, insecure edge under the words, the little breakage that indicates that she doesn’t really believe in kindness, up to and including that of strangers in bars who offer her their families. Which is probably vindicated by the universe nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, but, well, apparently the universe has decided that Tahani deserves to be proven wrong this time. Eleanor, despite herself, wholeheartedly agrees.

“Tomorrow,” she says firmly. She stretches up on her toes and kisses a soft, rosy cheek. “Sleep well, Tahani.”

She goes back into the bar and watches Michael clean up, listens to his story again, even though she’s heard it about a billion times by now. He was an architect, but the comic book villain kind, which before meeting him Eleanor hadn’t even known was a _thing._ He designed hostile architecture, spiky barriered anti-homeless benches and hidden alcoves to conceal surveillance cameras and libraries without anywhere flat at all, just weird slopes and futuristic angles, which most people (including Eleanor) fail to realize are futuristic only in their genocidal vision of a corporatist future where people have to pay to, like, breathe and shit and exist at all (rather than safely or comfortably, which still sucks, but isn’t horrific to the point of fatalism). And he helped with gentrification, too, made things so beautiful on the outside and so ugly on the inside that they could single-handedly justify destroying the communities people relied on.

And then one day, he had an epiphany (Eleanor privately suspects it was the result of a magic mushroom trip, though sometimes the darkness behind his eyes makes her wonder) and just fucking quit and donated almost all of his money, except for the amount that it took to buy the Neighborhood and the amount that he saves in case of emergency. A million, maybe, Eleanor figures, judging by the number of times Michael’s fire insurance claims have been denied and the Neighborhood has remained.

“I’ll walk you home,” Michael offers, when she’s yawning, and pats her back so uncomfortably when he drops her off at the stoop that she takes pity and hugs him. He always hugs her like he thinks she’s going to vanish.

The house is warm and bright and her heart is bursting out of her chest and it really is a very nice thing, to love and be loved. Eleanor used to hate the concept, but now that she’s embraced it, she thinks she might transmute to flowers if any more seeds of love bloom inside her ribcage. Her heart is pretty tough, though. Always seems able to take whatever she throws its way.

She’s pretty much swooning when she flops down on the couch, a surge of energy returning to her as she remembers Tahani and her fairy eyelashes and her mermaid hair and her blinding smile. Chidi looks up from his laptop and raises his eyebrows at her, at the hand dramatically spread over her heart.

“I’m in love,” Eleanor announces.

“Oh yeah?”

She grins and shifts around, lies on her stomach so she can look Chidi in the eye. “It was love at first sight. Like with you and me.”

Chidi rolls his eyes. “You called me Professor Egghead, out loud, to my face, for a full week after we met.”

“Like I said,” Eleanor says. “Like you and me.”

Chidi is pretty much Eleanor’s favorite person in the universe. They met when he moved to Phoenix to teach at Arizona State and she was temping in the financial aid office, and Chidi had stopped her while she was stealing office supplies (they had really nice paper clips, okay), and she’d been like, _Fuck I’m gonna get busted by some stupid egghead._ And Chidi had said, his voice trembling like some asshole’s vanity-plated, bass-boosted Benz, “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to have any Klonopin, would you?”

Eleanor did—well, she had Valium, but she doubted Professor Egghead cared—but she’d paid fifteen fucking dollars for the stuff. She almost denied it, but the guy’s eyes said that he was about two seconds away from hyperventilating, and Eleanor was a bitch but she wasn’t a complete monster. So she said, “Yeah, I’ll grab it, where’s your office?”

“304B,” he told her, and she went over to the kitchenette to get a little cone of metallic water and then rustled up the little pill baggie that S.R. had sold her out behind the Burger King dumpster last week. She took a brief moment to mourn her plan to tank some tequila with it, get fucked up, and watch vine compilations on YouTube. Then she headed back to 304B.

Professor Egghead was indeed huddled against the wall, balls-deep in a panic attack. Eleanor crouched across from him and said, “Hey, buddy. Got your benzos. You’re gonna have to breathe regularly enough to swallow it, though.”

His eyes darted over to her, wide and jittery, his face streaked with tears from some raw and primal terror and God, Eleanor knew that look, that afraid of yourself look, that what if I never breathe right again look. She said, “Okay, if I tell you what to do, you gotta do it, you feel me? Because I don’t want to explain to the campus cops how I killed a professor. You die, I’m bailing.”

He wouldn’t die, of course, though he probably felt like he was about to. But Eleanor really didn’t have a better method at that point with which to comfort people; they got Super Saiyan Eleanor, or they got no Eleanor at all. Jason, later, would help her with developing empathy, but in this past, this now, she was an anvil, and couldn’t be anything else. Fortunately for her and Chidi both, he’d been an untamable smelt all his life, nails and scrap metal and oozing lava everywhere, so for once she had been able to do something other than make everything around her worse.

Professor Egghead nodded emphatically, over and over, like a bobblehead stuck in a perpetual motion machine. She said, “Okay, great. What you’re gonna do is take a deep breath in through your nose, like you’re about to be underwater for an hour, for three seconds. Count ‘em off in your head. Hold your breath for five seconds.” He did so. “Good job, dude. You’re fuckin’ killing breathing. Now let out the breath, slow and steady, for seven seconds. Remember to count. Repeat until you can pop this bar without drowning in your own spit.”

It took him eighteen repetitions of this cycle before he made grabby hands at the pills. She rolled her eyes and handed them over. He swallowed them like the lifeline they probably were. After he had swallowed, rather impressively without choking to death, his breaths began to hitch again, and Eleanor said, “Breathing exercise, dude.” He resumed the loud breaths. Eleanor thought privately (and not without a fair bit of sympathy) that he looked like he was trying to give birth to a neurotypical self.

Another ten minutes, and he calmed. By this point Eleanor had gotten bored of watching his prenatal efforts and was rifling through his messy bookshelves. “Dude, what the fuck does this even mean?” she asked, holding up a fat book called _Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls' Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment._ “Is this guy just, like, putting his title into a fucking word generator or what?”

“I can’t read that from here,” Chidi said. Not long after, she’d make an executive decision on his behalf to go see an optometrist and get new glasses. “But probably. That’s pretty much moral philosophy in a nutshell. Thanks for helping me, by the way. I’m Dr. Chidi Anagonye.”

“Oh-ho-ho, _Doctor_ Ana—gun… show. What an honor. I didn’t know I was talking to a _doctor.”_

Chidi ignored this, which was, in retrospect, definitely the first sign that they were soulmates. “What’s your name?”

“Eleanor Shellstrop,” Eleanor said. “Temp extraordinaire.”

“Well, hey,” Chidi said. “Let me buy you dinner after you’re done for the day, yeah? Least I can do.”

Eleanor wasn’t going to say no to that. “Meet me at Shrimp n’ Stuff at seven,” she demanded. He met her later for dinner, and then they both got drunk and made the very stupid, very excellent, very life-changing decision to go back to Chidi’s house and fuck, and then they ended up dating for about a year. The sex tapered off first, because Chidi had started to teach her about philosophy and she had never been the hot for teacher type (well, not after Mr. “call me Thomas” Carlin the drama teacher had gotten arrested, anyway), and then the romance sort of just evaporated into so much grape soda left out under the 120 °F Arizona sun. But by that point they hadn’t been able to live without one another and didn’t really want to anyway, so Eleanor hadn’t looked for a new place after they broke up.

And now they’ve been roommates (granted, the fact that Eleanor has never once contributed to the rent probably makes her less a roommate and more a benificiently tolerated squatter) for three years. Chidi is dating this super hot neuroscientist named Simone now, and Eleanor bugs him in equal measure to have a threesome with her and to propose. Well, she guesses the threesome stuff is gonna have to end, because she is big time in love with Tahani now.

“Who’s the lucky person?” Chidi says. She loves him all over again for saying “person” instead of “guy.”

“Her name is Tahani,” Eleanor says dreamily. “Tahani Al-Jamil. She has, like, huge, you know”—she curves her hands exaggeratedly above her breasts—“and a smile like Kathryn Merteuil. The ultimate mean girl dream girl.”

“I feel like I’ve heard that name,” Chidi says. “Hey, Janet!” he hollers. “Do you know who Tahani Al-Jamil is?”

Janet’s the other reason Eleanor doesn’t pay rent. They’ve got an eidetic memory and read, like, forty-three zillion words per second, so they make mad bank on quiz shows. They were on _Jeopardy!_ for two years running, until Alex Trebek was finally like, you have to quit, you’ve made like fifteen million dollars. But they still go back for the tournaments, and win every single one.

They’re a little weird, don’t really get social cues, which they told Eleanor when they met, point-blank and very cheerfully, is because they’re autistic. Eleanor had just been like, you know what, you go girl, and then Janet had been like, I’m not a girl, and Eleanor had been like, okay cool. Eleanor’s not exactly one to judge—she might be able to catch the social cues, but she then proceeds to ignore them a good three-quarters of the time anyway. Janet’s still better with people. Probably because they’re the happiest and most pleasant person Eleanor has ever met or will ever meet. (This is not subject to debate.)

“Tahani Al-Jamil,” Janet calls back, “is a British heiress, neck model, philanthropist, and Kamilah’s sister. Why do you ask?”

They emerge into the living room, Jason riding along on their back piggyback-style. He’s supporting himself entirely so that Janet can stim, which manifests as hand-flapping on days that they’re verbal and spinning on days that they’re not. They look like a cool-ass tropical bird when they hand-flap, their suit jacket or vest-dress sleeves like big amethyst or sapphire or emerald-encrusted wings. When Eleanor told them so, maybe a month after they met, Janet had started flapping so excitedly that for a moment Eleanor thought they really might take flight.

Eleanor doesn’t exactly understand the whole thing between Jason and Janet (well, okay, she doesn’t fucking get it at all), but they’ve been together since, like, middle school, and got married the day Jason turned eighteen, though Eleanor has no clue how they met given that Janet graduated from their second doctoral program at the same time Jason graduated from high school. They were both twenty. She’ll probably never know.

“Eleanor’s in love with her,” Chidi answers, because Eleanor’s too busy picturing Tahani’s legs in loving detail. “They met earlier, at the Neighborhood, I guess?”

“She’s saving the bees,” Eleanor says. “Because she’s literally perfect.”

“You just compared her to Kathryn Merteuil,” Chidi says.

“Do you know what a big fucking crush I had on Kathryn Merteuil in third grade, dude?” Eleanor asks. “I was 100% determined to marry her. I was crushed when Donna told me she wasn’t real.”

“So, what, are you gonna marry Tahani Al-Jamil now?” Chidi asks.

“Ooh!” Jason cries. “I can totally help, I have mad wedding planner skillz.” He audibly pronounces the “z”.

“You do not,” Janet says, cheerfully and matter-of-factly. “I love you, Jason, but we got married in the parking lot of a chicken wing establishment.”

“It wasn’t a _chicken wing establishment,_ it was _Stupid Nick’s Wing Dump,”_ Jason insists, absolutely emphatic, taking no offense whatsoever at Janet’s loving and futile attempt to educate him. “It’s a Jacksonville _destination wedding spot.”_

“Also wrong,” Janet says cheerfully, and kisses Jason’s cheek. Eleanor will never fucking understand their relationship.

“We’re not getting married,” Eleanor says. “At least not _yet._ I met her, like, three hours ago. That’s a little fast even for me.” She loves all of them all over again for not pointing out that three hours is also a ludicrous amount of time in which to fall head-over-heels in love with a complete stranger.

“Well, you never know,” Chidi says. “Maybe she’s already in love with you too. You could do worse than a—”

“Hundred millionaire,” Janet supplies.

“Hashtag goals,” Jason says.

“You’re literally already married to a millionaire,” Chidi says, exasperated. “Who is, you know, the love of your life.”

“I’m being supportive,” Jason whines.

Eleanor tunes them out again, instead sending two snaps to Tahani in quick succession: first a picture of Jason sitting on top of the couch, his legs over Janet’s shoulders and his ankles hooked together around their neck, captioned, _lmao my fucking loser roommates got married at a place in jacksonville called stupid nicks wing dump,_ and then one of herself, deliberately not filtered or too posed, which says, _so when ru free for that dinner? 😘_

Tahani gets back to her within minutes. It’s a picture of her reflection in her hotel mirror, wearing ridiculously fancy, possibly silk pyjamas, about half of her makeup wiped meticulously off her perfect face. Eleanor feels a little pulse of sureness _(I was right I was right)_ at the fact that she’s already willing to show Eleanor that kind of vulnerability, and makes a pact with herself to live up to that trust. _Tomorrow at 7?_ the caption reads. _I’ll make a reservation._

Eleanor shoots back another picture, this time of her looking up at the camera with wide, happy eyes. _cant wait,_ she types, and then buries her head in a couch cushion and giggles until she has to surface again, breathless from the winds of sheer and uncomplicated happiness.

 

 

 

_a Friday, still November, starry-nighted  
Eleanor, enraptured_

They get dinner at some upscale restaurant Tahani’s assistant picked out for them, apparently, which Eleanor files away in her brain under _things to never deal with ever._ It’s sterile inside, has the same feel as Eleanor’s gynecologist’s office (which doesn’t exactly make her want to eat, but hey, Tahani’s paying). The waitress gives her no menu or choice in her meal and then has the gall to place in front of her a filet mignon so rare it’s basically bleeding, approximately the size of a quarter. Eleanor leans towards Tahani and whispers, “Do rich people have, like, a secret second dinner when they’re not in public or something?”

“Not usually,” Tahani says back, in an equally conspiratorial tone. “This restaurant seems to have neglected to understand the ‘multiple’ part of ‘multicourse meal’. We can get something else when we’re done here.”

Eleanor wiggles her eyebrows. “You ever had Taco Bell, or is that the food of the peasantry?”

“Taco… Bell?” Tahani repeats, eyebrows somehow conveying, independently of the rest of her face, that they’re scandalized, and oh, Eleanor’s going to make her eat those words. Or at least a crunchwrap supreme.

“This is bloody delicious,” Tahani says, though it comes out more like “fis is bluyee dewishish,” because her mouth is full of a sacred combination of seasoned beef, jalapeno sauce, Fritos and refried beans. They’re standing on the sidewalk outside—Eleanor would just sit on the curb, or a parking chock, but she suspects Tahani would be horrified at the very suggestion.

“You’ve heard my life story,” Tahani says, when she’s finished scarfing down her Taco Bell and they’ve re-relocated, with Michael’s help, to the roof of the Neighborhood, a sticky plastic tablecloth laid out under Tahani’s floral dress and her long, soft-looking legs. Eleanor tries and fails not to stare at her thighs, watching with eagle eyes for every glimpse of skin the wind affords her. She takes a swig of tequila and swallows hard. “I think it’s only fair for you to repay me in kind.”

“Barter economy, huh?” Eleanor deflects, then scowls when Tahani patiently continues to stare at her. “Alright, alright.” She leans against the roof ledge, pulling Tahani against her chest, because it feels nice and because that way she won’t have to look her in the eyes as she talks. “I grew up right here in Phoenix…”

She lays it out for Tahani, same as Tahani had for her: the ugly, the really ugly, the downright horrible. Doug and Donna Shellstrop and the chitinous carapace she grew in self-defense, going out on her own, working early and eternally because she had to keep going, despite herself she had always wanted very much to live. Her cruelty and her callousness and her hot-headed self-destructive hedonism. It’s only fair, after all, to spill the same sort of raw, fragile, exposed gut-stuff that Tahani has opened up to her.

But she makes sure to include the beautiful things, too. Meeting Chidi, loving Chidi; no longer loving Chidi, but keeping him anyway. Janet’s unabashed themselfness and Jason’s empathic kindness and Michael’s never-too-late redemption and Simone’s infectious confidence. How they all made Eleanor better than she’d previously believed possible. It occurs to her, as she talks, that all the wonderful things about her life can be summed up pretty simply as, _I met a lot of really amazing people, and we all worked together to make something that matters._ But it isn’t that simple, of course, so she fills the polluted Arizona night sky with the stars of her love for them—and the love she found, eventually, crucially, for herself.

Tahani clutches her fingers, which have been threaded into hers since Eleanor told her about getting emancipated. “I’m so glad I met you,” Tahani says fiercely. “Thank you. For making sure I talked to you.”

“Of course,” Eleanor says softly. “You think I could have seen you, and not made it a mission? You’re…”

Words flit through her mind. _Beautiful. Amazing. Extraordinary. Gorgeous, perfect, incredible, impossible. Everything._ None of them seem like enough.

“You’re worth that effort,” she says at last. “I didn’t even have a choice, really.”

Tahani twists and turns around, leaning close to her face, and suddenly Eleanor can’t breathe. _She’s gonna kiss me,_ she thinks, _oh God thank God finally._ It feels like she’s been waiting for centuries and not the better part of two days.

Tahani brushes Eleanor’s hair out of her face, leans a bit closer… and promptly bursts into tears.

Eleanor embraces her and rubs a soothing hand on her back, feeling guilty as she resents the absence of that kiss. Oh well. It’ll happen soon enough, she supposes. She’s willing to wait. For Tahani, she might be willing to wait forever. “It’s okay,” she murmurs. “It’s okay. I’ve got you, sweetheart.” _We’ve got time._

 

 

 

_December’s inaugural Saturday  
Tahani’s petrified_

The trifecta of their whirlwind romance is completed the following evening when Eleanor brings her back to the house. She’s told her friends to let their freak flags fucking _fly,_ because Tahani had said she wanted to meet real people and not celebrities who could probably replace themselves cardboard cutouts without anybody noticing the difference. And also, well, if Tahani is gonna judge Janet for stimming or Chidi for relating to every human experience via philosophy problems or Jason for infodumping about the Jaguars, then hot as she is, Eleanor doesn’t want anything to do with her anyway.

But she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t; she’s _perfect_ —or rather just imperfect enough to be interesting. Well, pretty imperfect in a lot of other ways, too. Tahani is snotty and she tries too hard and she’s thoughtlessly mean, and she’s got her head pretty far up in the pristine clouds of wealth and celebrity, and she’s insecure and manifests this by trying to get anyone and everyone’s approval, to the point that Eleanor thinks she loses a little bit of herself in the process.

She’s perfect for Eleanor, is the thing, the only thing that really matters. Not to the world, but definitely to her friends. Her weird little awesome family that they all built together.

She invites Michael, too, in his official role as surrogate uncle/human disaster. And Chidi brings Simone, because she’s the best. When she arrives with Tahani in tow, they’re all cooking in the kitchen and bickering about dinner and there are about four different conversations going on, in complicated overlappings of Michael-Janet (some complicated math that Eleanor doesn’t even try to understand) and Jason-Chidi-Janet (the theoretical ethics of superheroes) and Simone-Jason (Jason, trying and failing to convince Simone that a brain mutation could theoretically give him the power of telekinesis) and Chidi-Janet-Michael (the history and ethics of State borders).

“Only Janet could carry on that many conversations at once without turning into goop,” Eleanor murmurs in admiration. “They’re like the coolest, hottest android ever.”

She turns to give Tahani an encouraging smile and is met with air. When she turns back to the door, Tahani’s standing there, unmoving except for tremors like microquakes beneath her skin.

Eleanor approaches her. “Changed your mind?” she asks, a little flippantly, and then when Tahani flinches, “Sorry. You okay, babe?”

“What if they don’t like me?” asks Tahani in a very small voice.

Eleanor does her the courtesy of thinking it over, even though it’s a stupid question. “Well, I already know that Michael likes you,” she says. “He gave us all those free drinks, remember? And Chidi will like you eventually even if he hates you at first, because he’s my soulmate, and he’d do anything to keep me from pain.” She reaches down and squeezes Tahani’s hand, relieved to feel the trembles abating. “There are two surefire ways to make Jason love you forever, which are listening to him talk about the Jaguars or watching _High School Musical_ with him. Simone is really nice, you’d have to try to make her not like you. And Janet likes everyone. They’re literally an angel in a human body. One time I saw them talk a skinhead out of mugging a guy. He cried in their arms for an hour and then joined the Peace Corps.”

She squeezes Tahani’s hand again. This time, Tahani squeezes back. “And they’re all much nicer than me,” she finishes. “I’m a bitch, and I hate rich people on principle, and I’ve loved you since about fifteen minutes after I met you.” She takes advantage of being almost Tahani’s height, for once, and kisses her cheek. “So why don’t you go ahead and come on inside, huh?”

“Okay,” Tahani says. She blinks away wet whispers of tears and follows Eleanor into the kitchen. “I love you too, you know,” Tahani says. “Even if it’s a bit ridiculous to do so. You’re very… willful.”

Eleanor cocks her head, not entirely sure what that means (or if she should take offense at the “ridiculous” comment), but what the hell, she can be kind sometimes too. Tahani is probably incredible at winning over rich airheads with money-rotted zombie brains and no conscience, but there’s a difference between being good at being charming and being good at being open and vulnerable. Eleanor’s had three years of practice; Tahani’s had three days. The fact that she’s here at all is so brave Eleanor doesn’t really know what to do with it. “Thanks,” she says.

And of course (as if there were ever any doubt), Tahani proceeds to charm the pants off of everybody. She immediately asks Jason about the Jaguars, and good-naturedly listens to him ramble about Blake Bortles for fifteen minutes straight. Eleanor suspects she’s made a friend for life. Simone asks the room at large a question about Jung, and Janet gives their typical textbook answer but it’s Tahani who gives it some real thought. Three (five, counting Michael and Chidi) down, three (zero) to go.

Dinner is nice—and rather uncomplicated, all things considered. Janet’s the first one to name-drop, to Eleanor’s amazement; they and Tahani end up compare notes on Alex Trebek for a good half hour. Janet and Jason are in the middle of the Ken Jennings death threat story, Tahani so breathless with laughter that Eleanor’s a little worried she might need CPR, when Eleanor wanders into the kitchen.

She’s grateful but unsurprised to find Chidi waiting for her, leaning against the counter with an amused look in his eyes. Eleanor mirrors him, knocking their hips together. “So? What’s the verdict, teach?”

“I like her,” Chidi says. Eleanor feels something in her chest unfurl and start to consider germinating. “You weren’t kidding that she’s very beautiful.” (Eleanor’s pretty sure she had said “so fucking ridiculously hot that my eyeballs might melt out of my face,” but one must allow for Chidi’s Chidiosity.) “And she’s kind, too, you were right. I think she could be very good for you.”

“Ah, well, if you think she could be _good for me.”_ Her tone is juvenile and a little defensive. She never could take anyone’s input.

But there’s a reason Chidi has stuck with her all these years, and it’s not because she’s significantly (or discernibly) increased her politeness levels. “I do,” he says, ignoring her mockery entirely. Eleanor really does love him. “You deserve happiness, don’t you think? And so does she.” He bites his lip. “Be careful. I think she’s a little fragile.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eleanor smiles and elbows Chidi. “I’ve got this.”

“Oh, well, if you’ve _got this.”_

Tahani’s voice streams in through the archway. “Eleanor? Darling? Where did Eleanor go?”

Chidi snickers. Eleanor scowls at him, then lets through her smile and says, “Be right there, babe.” She flips Chidi off as she heads back to the table.

When Tahani finally leaves, a good two hours after she’d first begun to make noise about resting up for her flight, Eleanor walks her to the curb to wait for the moribund taxi company to send someone to fetch her. Tahani’s hand is warm in hers.

“Thank you so much,” Tahani says. “For everything, Eleanor. I really… it means so much to me, that you would open up your life and your home. More than you know.”

“I think I have an inkling,” Eleanor says gently. What she doesn’t say is that she has a pretty fucking unambiguous understanding of how much love and warmth Tahani’s been missing. Partly because she’s not sure if Tahani sees it with the same crystalline clarity, and partly because—well, she’s not going to be missing it anymore, is she? Not with Eleanor here, fighting Tahani’s loneliness like she’s Joan of Arc, except instead of fighting off the English or the pagans or whoever it was that Joan of Arc fought, she’ll be fighting off anyone who makes Tahani feel like she’s not a goddamned gift to the human race. Including God themself, if it comes to that.

“Thanks for trusting me,” she says, because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? As much as she’d pushed, she couldn’t have gotten Tahani here if she hadn’t been willing to trust Eleanor and take that last leap of _(it’s better translated as ‘leap to,’ actually,_ her Inner Chidi chides, and shut up, Inner Chidi, she knows her fucking Kierkegaard) faith. For all that Eleanor is a master of persuasion, knows how to poke and prod and _push_ until people go where she asks and do what she wants, if Tahani hadn’t been able to see Eleanor’s open arms for what they were, close her eyes, and trust-fall down into them, nothing Eleanor might have said could have made any difference.

“I’m glad I did,” Tahani says. She hugs Eleanor like it’s her last hug before an execution, and then the cab pulls up.

“Text me when you land!” Eleanor hollers, because she doesn’t know what else to say. And then she does: “Love you!”

“Love you too!” Tahani yells, her hair whipping across her face as the cab creates winds with its leaving. And she’s gone, nothing even resembling a brush of lips traded between them.

Eleanor. Is. So. _Screwed._

 

 

 

_December and January and February and you get the idea  
excuses, excuses_

And so they stay in touch, after that. More than in touch, really—Tahani starts making up all kinds of ridiculous paper-thin excuses to come to Phoenix, slums it at East High (the horrible, horrible name that Jason has given the house which, despite Eleanor’s best efforts, is pretty much cemented by now), spends entire days and sometimes weeks glued to Eleanor’s side like a conjugal twin.

They do stupid domestic shit, grocery shopping (after the whole Taco Bell thing, it shouldn’t surprise her that Tahani has never heard of Walmart, but somehow it still does, because _Jesus)_ and organizing the kitchen and house-cleaning days. They do family stuff, movie nights and family dinners and taking Jason to PetSmart to play with the ferrets. Worst (or perhaps best) of all, they _date._ They go to fancy candlelit dinners and sweaty crowded baseball games (which they both hate, but somehow happens anyway) and elaborate tastings in vineyards which leave Eleanor wine-drunk and handsy, and none of them end in so much as a kiss.

It’s easy to fall in love with Tahani, so easy it would scare her if it didn’t feel so good. Tahani is funny, in an innocent, almost childlike way; she likes slapstick comedies and bathroom humor and practical jokes. (This last penchance starts a prank war with Jason and Michael that Eleanor thinks is probably going to end in bloodshed.) She’s sharp and gentle at once, unpredictably so, which is sometimes frustrating but mostly exhilarating. She’s very affectionate, both physically and emotionally. She gets Eleanor little gifts, compliments her, shows her off to everyone she knows like a prize-winning puppy. It’s so cute it makes Eleanor’s teeth ache.

She’s always _touching_ Eleanor, always has a hand on her hip or her shoulder or in her own, always playing with her hair or sitting on the empty couch with her thighs pressed against Eleanor’s, always kissing her cheeks or her forehead or her hands. It drives Eleanor crazy, sometimes, the desire to breach the last bit of distance and drag Tahani back to her bedroom to show her all the other, more pleasurable ways they could enjoy one another’s touch.

Eleanor had fallen in love with her at first sight, but she also mostly hadn’t. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that she’d _wanted_ to love her at first sight, known that she could, maybe even known that she would. And she’d been right—loving Tahani is easier than scamming old people into buying fake medicine, when they’ve already been hypnotized and pyramid-schemed into religious belief. That initial longing makes it nigh-impossible to stop herself from wanting to stop herself. Even if Tahani doesn’t love her back (yet), the act of loving her, independent of anything else, is more beautiful and fulfilling to Eleanor than any mutual relationship she’s ever had, except for Chidi.

Her vow to wait for Tahani forever starts to feel less like an outlandishly romantic declaration and more like an unfortunately-phrased prophecy. Eleanor can’t figure out if she’s letting her down gently or genuinely has no clue that Eleanor’s been trying to fuck her for months. Though of course by the time it’s been _months_ (and God, don’t remind her, she’s been masturbating like ten times a day, in the shower like a teenager when Tahani’s there because Tahani _sleeps in her bed),_ Eleanor’s less trying to bone down and more trying to actually date. Possibly get married. She never thought she was the marrying type, but for Tahani? Yeah. She is. She really is.

Eleanor leans towards the latter, most days, because they keep having these _moments._ Moments where Tahani leans towards Eleanor unconsciously, like a moon in her gravitational net, kept away from touching her but also desperate for it. Moments where Tahani looks at her like the sun and the stars and the whole Milky Way are made out of her eyes. Moments where Eleanor says something nice about Tahani and Tahani reaches up and touches her face so gently it’s like she thinks Eleanor is a precious antiquity and she’s just won the best of all possible auctions. Moments where Eleanor wakes up and Tahani is watching her and she sees Eleanor wake and she doesn’t look away, just watches her and smiles.

But she also doesn’t do shit about it, because she figure’s she’s been about as subtle as Jason when he wants her to watch _High School Musical 2_ with him. She declares her love for Tahani on a regular basis, for fuck’s sake. (These declarations grow in frequency and pointedness over the months, because _Christ,_ Eleanor’s only human.) She’s always touching her, kissing her hands and cheeks, doting on her and letting her into places she hadn’t even let Chidi. She’s in love with her, and she’s really fucking obvious about it. There’s oblivious and then there’s _oblivious,_ and Tahani’s not stupid.

There’s some kind of hang-up is keeping Tahani from that final leap _to_ faith. Eleanor’s not sure what it is, exactly. It’s definitely not sexuality—Eleanor’s gaydar is 100% dead-on balls accurate, and anyway, she’s not deluding herself about the way Tahani looks at her, which is a little bit like she wants to eat Eleanor alive, with some fava beans and a nice chianti on the side. (Maybe not the best quote to use there, but look, Eleanor is _losing her mind_ over here.)

Eleanor has all kinds of ridiculously sappy metaphors to describe Tahani, a whole fucking vault of them, but when the whole enchilada’s been rolled, the fact of it is this. Tahani has been maltreated her whole life, the victim of her own (un)fortunate birth. She’s been belittled and treated like she’s not worth a second glance since before she knew what _disappointment_ meant. So maybe it’s that simple—she’s making sure beyond surety that Eleanor’s not going to meet someone else and fall for them. As if she _would._ As if she’s noticed anyone else since she met Tahani. The thought is so ridiculous that Eleanor has a difficult time taking it seriously.

Maybe she thinks Eleanor will get bored of her? Maybe she’s still in the process of coming out to herself? Maybe she doesn’t know how to bring it up, now that all this time has passed?

(There are other explanations, ones Eleanor only considers when she’s just past the ugly side of hammered. _Maybe,_ her traitor brain whispers, _Tahani’s just not interested. Maybe she’s attracted to you, but doesn’t want to deal with all your loser feelings. Maybe she doesn’t want to date someone as poor/ugly/broken/fucked-up as Eleanor Shellstrop. Maybe she’s too embarrassed by the prospect to even consider it. Maybe she’s been pitying you this whole time for holding out hope._

But in the brutal/beautiful light of sober day, those doubts lose their power. Tahani’s reluctance to accept what Eleanor is very blatantly offering isn’t about Eleanor herself. Why would she keep coming around—and bringing Eleanor with her, and introducing her to Margot Robbie and Michael B. Jordan and Dwayne “The Sellout” Johnson if she were embarrassed of her? Eleanor’s a fucking catch.)

(Or, _maybe,_ though it doesn’t seem _possible,_ she really _is_ just that fucking stupid. Eleanor’s not an elitist, but that degree of idiocy might actually be a little bit too much for her.)

Whatever it is that’s holding Tahani back from letting herself love Eleanor, Eleanor doesn’t know, but she _does_ know that it’s gotta be something that really matters to Tahani. So she lets her set the pace—Eleanor’s got time. If Tahani needs Eleanor to wait, well, then Eleanor will fucking wait. She might not be _happy_ about it, but she can wait. Probably. Definitely. _She’ll wait._

Feelings. Eleanor isn’t feeling them. They make everything stupid and complicated and _matter._

 

 

 

_April’s third Sunday, mixing memory and desire  
Tahani needs a favor_

She’s pretty much resigned to her fate as a pussy-ass eunuch doomed to pine forever, and probably die alone and haggily croned up from the sorrow of passionate unrequited devotion of the sort epic poetry is written about when Tahani calls.

This in itself isn’t unusual. Tahani calls her all the time, to the point that Eleanor makes her foot the bill so Janet doesn’t have to. Even the subject matter, when she gets going, is pretty far under par for the course—her annoying bitch sister and her (probably clinically insane) parents and her constant inability to measure up. Eleanor cares, because she’s a chump and also in love with her, but she’s heard it enough times that she’s pretty much tuned her out in favor of annihilating the high scores on Jason’s old Atari. When she pauses abruptly, though, Eleanor still notices. She lets Ms. Pac-Man get eaten alive by ravenous ghosts, turning her attention back to Tahani.

“What’s up, babe?” Eleanor says, because Tahani is an even worse conversational partner than she is and if she’s paused it’s because there’s something she’s hesitant to say, not because she’s realized it’s probably Eleanor’s turn to talk after—she glances at the phone, which is laid out on her chest in between her breasts so she can catch the tone of Tahani’s tinny speakerphone voice, if not the actual words—fifty-three minutes.

“I have—a favor to ask,” Tahani says.

“Shoot.”

“So my cousin Sahar is getting married,” Tahani says, the words coming out in a jumbled rush now that she’s started. “In, er, in a month. And my parents, you’ve probably managed to gather, are being even more intolerable than usual. Will you be my plus one?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Eleanor says through a yawn, then after a moment where Tahani should be talking and instead there’s silence, says, “What’s the catch?”

“Catch?” Tahani says, high-pitched. “Well, you have to interact with my family.”

“Come on, hot stuff,” Eleanor says. “What’s the catch?”

“It’s not a catch, exactly,” Tahani hedges. Eleanor stifles a sigh. If this were Chidi she would have hung up about two minutes ago. Well, okay, she would have hung up fifty-two minutes ago, but whatever, she’s a good friend, and also Chidi is socially awkward but he usually manages to at least let Eleanor get a few words out before he interrupts again. “It’s… I was thinking, that, well…”

“Spit it out,” Eleanor says. “Unless you want me to, like, pretend to be an illiterate homeless woman you picked up off the streets that you’re taking pity on by showing her the ways of the rich _My Fair Lady_ -style and goggle at your family’s house like I’ve never imagined such finery, I’m not gonna get mad.”

There’s such a long pause that Eleanor says, “Do you want me to pretend to be an illiterate homeless woman you pick—”

“So my parents are homophobic,” Tahani interrupts, and Eleanor stops short because, okay, she’s definitely interested in whatever’s gonna follow _that._ “Not, you know, violently homophobic or anything, they wouldn’t disown me if I brought home a woman, but they would definitely be extremely uncomfortable, and they might even embarrass themselves trying and failing to hide their revulsion in public. So I was thinking that maybe you could come as, you know. My _plus one.”_

“So you don’t want me to pretend to be Eliza Doolittle, you want to subject me to your family’s ambient—and possibly explicit—homophobia for the duration of your cousin’s wedding?”

“If you’re uncomfortable with it, I completely—”

“I’m in,” Eleanor says. “Dummy. Of course I’m in.”

Tahani breathes out. “Oh, thank heavens. I was pretty sure this is exactly the sort of troublemaking you thrive on, but I wasn’t one hundred percent positive.”

“You know me so well,” Eleanor says, careful to keep the bitter irony out of her voice. If Tahani had half a brain they wouldn’t have to _pretend_ to be together, they _would_ be together, and would have been for months, and she could destroy her family’s hopes for her forever and bone down with Eleanor at the same time.

But this half-cocked scheme of Tahani’s is probably going to involve being as PDA as possible around the various extended Al-Jamils, which is reward in itself. And, well, this _is_ exactly her kind of clusterfuck, Tahani _does_ know her, she just never knew Eleanor-Pre-Tahani and thus doesn’t know that she hasn’t gone this long without sex since she was seventeen or what that means re: the whole Eleanor being madly in love with her situation. It’s obvious to Chidi and Jason and Janet and Simone and even Michael, but Tahani never really met Horny for All Mailpersons and Stone Cold Steve Austin Look Alikes Eleanor, because that Eleanor went into hibernation the second she first laid eyes on Tahani.

Also: she’s never met the oh-so-legendary Kamilah or the first-nameless Al-Jamil parents, but she knows enough about them to hate them more brutally and unequivocally than Tahani has the heart to. If this makes them squirm? Well, that’s a hell of a bonus too.

“—the tickets tomorrow,” Tahani’s saying. “You’ll have to go shopping, too, but we can do that while you’re here. You’ll be here for two weeks, which is a little longer than all the events but I want to account for jet lag, and also—”

“Hey, babe?” Eleanor interrupts gently. “It’s almost four here. You mind sending all this to me in an email so I can go ahead and crash?”

“Oh!” Tahani exclaims. “Oh, shite, of course. My apologies. Have wonderful dreams, darling.”

“I’ll dream about your parents losing their shit in a couple weeks.” Eleanor yawns. “It’ll be even better because it’s going to come true.”

Tahani is silent for so long that Eleanor assumes she’s hung up, moving her phone to her nightstand without checking the screen. She’s not sure if it’s a dream or reality when she hears Tahani say, the words sounding almost choked-off, “I do love you so.” She doesn’t have the energy to double-check. Sleep’s already claimed her.

 

 

 

_a May Thursday, liminal  
Simone is always right_

A driver picks Eleanor up at Heathrow Airport, because of course one does. She’s waiting in the baggage claim when Eleanor arrives, a doubtless expensive screen-printed sign reading “Eleanor Shellstrop” aloft in her hands. Eleanor approaches cautiously.

“Hi,” Eleanor says. “Uh, did Tahani send you?”

The woman nods. “Come with me.”

Eleanor falls asleep in the car, still sleepy from jet lag and the flight. There had been a baby three rows behind her who had evidently not yet developed the constitution to exist semi-comfortably at 35,000 feet above sea level, and Eleanor’s sympathetic to the cause of parents being able to leave their houses but by hour four of the screams she was planning a hijacking and by hour ten she’d nearly talked herself into following through.

She’s further creeped out when a fucking real-ass tuxedo-wearing butler greets her at the door and takes her up to a guest room. Eleanor doesn’t say that she’s staying in Tahani’s room because Tahani never mentioned a _fucking butler_ and Eleanor figures she wants the big fake coming out to be as dramatic and messy and abrupt as possible. It all feels a little silly, like Tahani’s parents are Bond villains and not just fucked-up old people who probably shouldn’t have reproduced. Eleanor’s glad they did, of course, but the act itself reflects a gaping hole in their ability to self-assess their own capacity for empathy. Or maybe they just didn’t give a shit.

She doesn’t unload her stuff, despite the proffered room, and it’s only a few minutes of wondering where the butler went and if he knows the wifi password, and then figuring out that they have a network called “Al-Jamil Estate Guest” (which is fucking _ridiculous_ , who the fuck is so rich they have a _separate_ _guest wifi network)_ and connecting to that, and then sending Chidi a series of about sixty whiny Snapchats which all contain variations of the phrase _why did you let me do this I thought you liked me_ before she hears the unmistakable click-clack of Tahani’s physics-defying needle-thin six-inch heels heading up the hallway.

“Eleanor, darling!” Tahani exclaims, and squeezes her, kissing her cheek. Eleanor manages not to reach up and touch the spot, though it still burns. She takes one of Eleanor’s bags and heads off towards a completely different, Jesus Christ, _wing_ of the house, unpacking Eleanor’s shoddy-by-comparison jeans and zebra pen of horizontally striped shirts.

“So your house is literally insane,” Eleanor says, flopping down on the bed with an exhale. “I mean, I knew you were rich, but I didn’t know you grew up in the fucking hedge maze from _The Shining.”_ She can feel Tahani watching her, even though her eyes are closed, and wonders whether Tahani’s gonna jump her. She thinks she genuinely might be too tired, and she kind of hopes that if the sight of Eleanor in her bed sends Tahani into an uncontrollable frenzy of passionate lust that it happens tomorrow and not today. She wants to sleep for eighteen hours.

“You have to stay awake,” Tahani chides, pulling her up, though she immediately rests Eleanor’s head on her own perfect shoulder. “Jet lag can be conquered only through force of will.”

Eleanor sighs and then yawns. “You’re the expert,” she says, graciously not making fun of how Tahani sounds like the Wise Old Mentor from every anime she’s ever watched crossfaded. “So what’s the plan?”

“Today you get adjusted,” Tahani says. “My parents are going out to dinner, so you won’t meet them yet. Tomorrow we go out shopping, and then we’ll have dinner with Mum and Dad and Kamilah, which is going to be absolutely horrible.”

“Like you wanted,” Eleanor tells Tahani’s shoulder.

Tahani laughs. “Yes. The next day is Sahar’s bachelorette brunch, which you’ll accompany me to. Then four days of downtime, and then the mehndi, which is a ceremony where the bride and groom get henna. Another day off for the Sabbath—and Bilal’s bachelor party, but we’re not invited to that, of course—and then they’ll get married right here on the grounds next Saturday. Sunday morning, they’ll host the walima, which is basically a huge feast, and then you’re scheduled to return to Phoenix the following afternoon.” It’s nearly two weeks in all. Tahani rubs Eleanor’s arm soothingly. “Think you can put up with me for that long, darling?”

“You, no question,” Eleanor says. “Your family, on the other hand…”

Tahani snorts, somehow graceful about it. Eleanor keeps her eyes open and tries not to think about being desperately in love with her.

“Oh,” Tahani says, like she just remembered something. Eleanor knows her well enough to know that she’s probably been thinking about whatever she’s about to say the whole time, but was waiting for what she deemed the right moment for an oh-so-casual segue. “If you’re okay with it, I’d like to add a bit to the ruse.”

“What’s the new layer?”

Tahani reaches into her dress pocket (the concept of which still boggles Eleanor’s mind) and pulls out a small velvet box. “I can’t imagine anything that would infuriate them more than me announcing my engagement during my cousin’s wedding,” she says, almost shyly. “What do you say, Eleanor? Will you be my fake fiancée?”

Jesus. Eleanor’s awake now, more or less, sits up, takes the box out of Tahani’s long, elegant, perfectly manicured fingers.

The band is thin and light and flat, studded with little jewels around the edge. Diamonds, probably. It’s tasteful, understated, speaks to Eleanor’s particular aesthetic sensibility. Tahani could have opted for a huge, flashy, obnoxious rock. Something that would have screamed, every time Mr. and Mrs. Al-Jamil caught sight of it, that Tahani was an unrepentant queer now and that Eleanor had corrupted her. But she picked this out because it’s fucking perfect for Eleanor, the right ring. It feels like a declaration of love, probably is, but she doesn’t know if Tahani knows that. So she just says, with maybe a little bit too much freaked-out mania in her voice, “Your parents are going to put a hit out on me.”

“Do you like the ring?” Tahani asks anxiously. “I thought that maybe I should go for something a bit flashier, but this one just… I saw it, and, well.”

Maybe Tahani really is that deep in denial. Or the closet. _Or she just doesn’t love you,_ Eleanor thinks viciously. But Tahani’s still looking at her with those wide, worried eyes, so Eleanor slides the ring onto her left hand and holds it up under the overhead lights. She has to blink away opportunistic tears. “Don’t be stupid. It’s fucking perfect.”

“Oh,” Tahani says, and stares at her hand.

Eleanor doesn’t sigh, but it’s a close thing. “Why don’t you show me around the house?” she suggests, suddenly itching to escape the humid, oppressive tension of this moment.

“Okay,” Tahani says, blinking a bit. Maybe she wanted more, or expected more, but Eleanor’s giving it her all just to not jump Tahani, so she’s gonna have to live with it for now. The fact that she hasn’t slept in over a day isn’t helping.

Tahani shows her the house, in all its grandeur, and Eleanor mostly zones out, put off by Tahani’s seemingly unconscious adoption of her Hostess Tahani demeanor, the impossibility of ever really absorbing the Manor’s immensity, and by the fact that she really is absolutely exhausted. It’s ancient, made of stone probably harvested by medieval peasants or something, has four different fucking wings, three libraries (which, for a moment, make Eleanor wish she had somehow been able to smuggle Chidi along with her), a fucking _ballroom,_ a heated indoor swimming pool that Eleanor is definitely going to be using, empty useless space upon empty useless space, so opulent and depraved and _pointless_ that it makes Eleanor feel a little bit ill. She abruptly understands the French Revolution on a much more intimate level, and promises herself to track down some Rousseau later.

The worst room of all is a kind of shrine to Kamilah’s art, which is all so terrible that Eleanor nearly does vomit. Technically, it’s excellent, kind of remarkably so, but the feeling it evokes is unbearable. Thirty seconds in the room makes Eleanor feel like she’s under siege from ten thousand opposing armies, and all of them have tanks and nukes and she’s armed with nothing other than her old, heavily annotated, spindly-spined copy of _What We Owe to Each Other._ Their parents probably rent the shrine out to horror movie producers whenever Kamilah isn’t around to be indignant about it.

The grounds are similarly mind-boggling. When they reach the second garden, overlooking a greenhouse the size of Eleanor’s entire house and a huge, idyllic expanse of rolling verdant wildflowery hills, Eleanor claims she wants to stay behind for a while to bask in this rare gift of greenery. It’s really only half a lie. It looks like the fucking Windows ‘97 default desktop background, but better because Eleanor can taste crisp air instead of smouldering circuit fumes.

Tahani, for once, takes the hint and leaves her there. Once the familiar clack of her heels has been gone for a full two minutes, Eleanor picks up her phone and moves to press her absolute favorite favorite contact.

Except. Chidi’s her soulmate and her anchor and her moral philosopher moral compass, but decisive he is most certainly not. She’s his lifeline and his first love and his executive function in turn, and they love and need each other in a way that she thinks, sometimes, might matter to her more than romantic love, or at least as much.

But they have other friends for a reason. Multiple reasons, they’re not Machiavellians, but the main utilitarian justification for not just bunkering down at East High and becoming esthetics (other than sex, which Eleanor misses, a _lot)_ is that when Chidi has an ethical quandary or Eleanor has a decision to make, they can fucking talk to somebody else. Eleanor’s hulaed that particular hoop, and neither she nor Chidi want to try to maintain its futile balance when they can just get Jason to tell Chidi how to feel or Simone to tell Eleanor what to do or Janet to solve their whole problem by quoting a bizarre, obsolete precedent from an obscure, mostly-destroyed Akkadian tablet published during the literal bronze age. Which they’ve done, more than once, though not always with Akkad precisely. Eleanor doesn’t have their memory, and who fucking cares about a bunch of dead people anyway.

In short: Eleanor needs someone to actually tell her what to do, not ramble about a tenuously related thought experiment some philosophy bitch did three hundred and seventeen million billion years ago.

So instead, she calls Simone.

“Eleanor,” comes the familiar bright voice, Australian accent twanging through the phone waves. “What’s up, you self-destructive cunt?”

Eleanor smiles to herself. “You’re the most level-headed person I know,” she says. “I need advice.”

“Oh, dear,” Simone says. “If I’m the sanest person you know, there sure as shit isn’t hope for the rest of us, is there?”

Eleanor ignores her. “So you know how I’m in love with Tahani?”

“No, Eleanor, I had no idea,” Simone says, in an absolutely perfect deadpan. “Yes. Jesus motherchristing fuck. It’s all you talk about. I know you’re in love with Tahani. All of Phoenix knows you’re in love with Tahani. Probably the Queen and the Dalai Lama and the spectre of communism know you’re in love with Tahani.”

“And yet Tahani somehow doesn’t,” Eleanor grumbles.

“So are you finally going to propose or what?” Simone asks.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Eleanor says, and fills her in.

Simone’s laughing too hard at her pain by the end to hear Eleanor’s final, pitiful whining coda, which all considered probably is a small favor the universe has paid her, because everybody’s already been giving her shit about the pining for months and Simone is the worst of them all.

“You are so screwed, mate,” Simone says cheerfully, once she’s reigned in her at-Eleanor’s-expense laughter. “Have you ever heard of the Sleeping Beauty problem?”

Eleanor seriously considers, for a moment, throwing her phone into the fountain. She just groans instead. “You _motherfucker!_ You’re as bad as Chidi. Not every interpersonal issue can be solved with thought experiments, you know!”

Simone ignores her. “Basically the Sleeping Beauty problem is about not knowing where you are in the world, and also decision theory. The experimenters tell Sleeping Beauty the following. On Sunday, she’ll be put to sleep. Now, during her sleep she will be woken up either once or twice. Whenever she wakes up, she’ll be given an amnesia drug that will make her forget that she’s woken up at all. A coin flip will determine whether the experimenters just wake her and interview her on Monday—that’s heads—or if it’s tails, they wake her up and interview her on Monday _and_ Tuesday. Wednesday, they let her up for good. During their interview, they ask her if she can justify them having gotten heads. Now, she might say, the probability of getting heads is one-third. Or she might decide it’s one-half. It’s all very math-y and complicated. But it tells us a lot about how people make decisions, and retroactively explain them.”

“What exactly is your point?” Eleanor grinds out.

“My point, dumbfuck, is that as much as Sleeping Beauty can explain away one answer or the other, she’ll never _know_ unless she asks,” Simone says. “Life _isn’t_ a thought experiment, even if Chidi thinks so, and you’re not gonna find proof of what Tahani feels for you by treating it like one. You’re stuck in an unending feedback loop of being a fucking pussy. Just nut up and tell her how you feel and ask if she feels the same way.” Eleanor can hear her smile, a continent away, and soaks up its warmth through her phone screen. Possibly that’s just sweat, but whatever. Eleanor loves her. “You can hypothesize and rationalize and pick apart her every behavior, but you’ll never know unless you hear it from her. Stop screwing around and just have a human conversation for once in your godforsaken life.”

Eleanor takes a deep breath. Of course that’s the answer, she knew it all along, but she needed Simone’s absolute surety of will—and her blessing—to believe what she already knew to be true. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah.”

“For what it’s worth,” Simone says, in her matter-of-fact Simone Is Always Right voice, “I’ve met Tahani, and I’ve seen the two of you interact, and the ring and this whole wedding scheme aren’t things friends do for their normal platonic friends, at least not unless they’re trying to change that platonic friendship into decidedly _not_ platonic fucking, or they’re as freakishly codependent as you and Chidi. I’d bet East High on her being in love with you.”

Eleanor scowls reflexively at the name, then softens. It’s a nice thing to say, and Simone is always right, after all. “Thanks, Simone. I love you.”

“Love you too, you annoying twat,” Simone says. “Oh buggering fuck—Jason, don’t touch that or I will cut off your—”

Eleanor hangs up.

Right. So she’ll talk to Tahani. Not before the wedding, though; on the off chance that Tahani isn’t madly in love with her, it needs to wait. They’ve got a mission, which is to stick it to the Al-Jamils, and for that to go smoothly they’ve got to be a unified front. Which they sure as shit won’t be if Eleanor is so embarrassed that she can’t even look in Tahani’s direction.

After the wedding, she’ll tell her how she feels. Clock starts now.

 

 

 

_the longest Friday of all time  
Eleanor can’t catch a break_

The next morning, Eleanor wakes up with a renewed sense of purpose. She can’t help smiling like the monkeys she evolved from when she sees the very real fake engagement ring on her finger. She’s got this shit on lock. All she has to do is piss off Tahani’s parents. She’s probably going to literally be doing that in her sleep by tomorrow.

“Darling, you’re awake!” Tahani calls.

Eleanor grins up at her, a hint of a plan formulating in her mind. Just because she’s waiting on the big, soppy, end-of-the-movie Mr. Darcy “I love you most ardently” confession doesn’t mean she can’t have a little fun first.

“So I was thinking,” Eleanor starts, “that if we’re going to properly fuck with your parents, we need to really amp up the PDA. Which means that we need to: a, get our backstory straight, and b, make sure we actually look comfortable macking on each other. When you’re dating somebody there’s this unconscious lack of personal space that happens, and we’ve gotta make it seem natural. We can work on it throughout the day, if you think word won’t get back here.”

“Splendid idea!” Tahani effuses. “I suppose we ought to figure out what all we ought to practice now, before we head out.”

She sits down on the bed next to Eleanor, and Eleanor says, “Well, we’ve got personal space down already.”

Tahani blinks and glances down, blushing prettily when she realizes that her arm is already brushing Eleanor’s. “Oh,” she says. “I suppose we do.”

“There’s hand-holding,” Eleanor says, “though we have that too, I think. And casual touches”—she glances at Tahani’s hand on her knee, which stills, grinning as her blush deepens—“so I guess the only thing left is kissing.”

“Quite right,” Tahani says. “Just so.”

Eleanor grins. It’s always a good day when she gets someone’s number, and Tahani’s is 1-800-Gets-Extra-British-When-She’s-Flustered. “You ready, babe?” she murmurs, and turns to Tahani.

“Of course,” Tahani fumfers, obviously not ready. Eleanor smiles at her. “Go ahead.”

How generous. Eleanor stays where she is, but moves her hand up to carefully push Tahani’s hair behind her shoulders, away from her face, and then cups her cheeks very softly in both hands. “There’s still time to abort, you know,” Eleanor says. “It’s okay if you want to.”

“No,” Tahani says sharply. “Kiss me, Eleanor.”

Well. Who is she to refuse when a princess issues decrees?

Eleanor runs a feather-light thumb along Tahani’s cheekbone, then back down the side of her face to her jaw, thumbing at the cleft of her chin. Tahani’s eyes are very wide, her pupils blown. Eleanor smirks. If Tahani didn’t want this, she’d probably be snapping at her by now to get it over with.

Then a darker thought occurs to her, which is that perhaps Tahani has simply never known this kind of gentleness before, and craves it so desperately that she’d take it from anyone. God, even if that’s the case, Eleanor wants to be the one to give it to her. Eleanor wants her to never wonder what it feels like to be cherished. Eleanor wants her to never live another moment without the absolute certainty that she is loved and will be loved until one of them dies.

She moves her thumb up to Tahani’s lips, leaning a bit closer, and drags it along the divot of her upper lip and down to rest on her bottom lip. Tahani’s lips part slightly, wettening Eleanor’s thumb, and she relaxes and her eyes flutter closed and she shudders a little and that’s what Eleanor was waiting for and Eleanor has never known intimacy quite like this either

and she smooths one hand down Tahani’s neck and flicks her thumb along the nape of her soft hair and cups Tahani’s jaw with the other and she’s still making sure to stay so gentle and so soft with her because she deserves it she’s a precious thing

and Tahani’s lips part wider, and Eleanor kisses her.

Tahani sits very still for a long moment, and then surges forward, her hands coming up to Eleanor’s head to grab her hair. Eleanor ignores that it hurts a little because _this is their first kiss_ and she wants it to be a hell of a thing, looking back, a beautiful little perfect memory for Tahani. She pulls away when Tahani tries to deepen the kiss, because she doesn’t want to do the big confession thing right now, although she’s about 98.9% sure it would result in them fucking right here and now and then possibly going to go get that civil union.

Eleanor is _so fucked._

Tahani shakes her head, her pupils still huge, watching Eleanor with wide, slightly guilty eyes. Eleanor supposes she’s to blame for making it so intimate. Maybe Tahani’s just as unsure about it all as she is, and took that all for the pretty much unmistakable love that it was, and now she doesn’t know why they haven’t fallen into each other.

Eleanor can’t deal with this right now. Not here. Not in this fucking house. Suddenly she hates this stupid manor more than she’s ever hated anything.

“So that was good,” Eleanor says, and it somehow comes out even. “But now we need to make it look practiced.”

“How do we do that?” Tahani asks, her voice trembling a little.

“Get ready for the day,” Eleanor says. “And I’ll come up and kiss you, not like that, just casual, and when you stop reacting we’re ready.” She ponders. “Though I guess we have tonight too. Not like we’re gonna kiss in front of your parents. And even if that does happen, it’s going to be so horrible and awkward that any weirdness will get chalked up to that.”

She thinks, then, too, about what it means that Tahani has done this, because it seems like there have to be easier ways to piss off your parents than bringing a random female friend around and publicly declaring your eternal love for her. And the whole engagement thing is—is it worth it to her, to suffer the embarrassment of telling them she broke it off, just to make them mad for a couple of weeks? And she could wait to tell them until _right_ before the wedding, when they’ll really be at their most incensed and ripe for public humiliation, not two weeks beforehand when—

This is pointless. She’ll ask her soon enough. No reason to wallow in the blaring feedback loop of her own cowardice. Eleanor gets up and heads over to the huge ornate over-the-top bathroom and taps Tahani’s shoulder. “Hey there,” she says, and gets up on her tiptoes to reach her ridiculous height. They brush lips.

Eleanor frowns. “I guess we need to figure out the height thing too,” she muses. “That’s a whole mechanical problem, and if we’re gonna look practiced—”

There’s a clattering sound, and Eleanor looks down to see the scattered remnants of what used to be eyeshadow. Further up, and Tahani’s hands are trembling. Eleanor takes them. “Hey,” she says. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nobody’s ever—” Tahani stutters. “Nobody’s ever—touched me before. Like that. Like I was—”

Eleanor doesn’t finish the sentence for her, unsure what she’ll reveal. She squeezes Tahani’s hand and says, softly, “Like you were what?”

_Treasured? Beloved? The most important thing in the whole fucking universe?_

“Like I matter,” Tahani chokes out, and _oh._

Eleanor, helpless, grasps her hand and kisses the palm fiercely. “You matter to me,” Eleanor says. “More than pretty much anything, when you get down to it.”

Tahani looks at her with huge bright teary eyes and fuck it, if this is happening now, then Eleanor’s gonna—

[ _I’M COMING OFF THE ACROPOLIS / TO START SOME PANDEMONIUM,_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90) Eleanor’s phone screeches. Tahani drops her hand like a match burned down to nothing. Eleanor sighs. The moment’s already gone; no recovering it now. “That’s Chidi,” she says. “I should probably…”

“Of course, of course!” Tahani says. “Mustn’t keep Chidi waiting.” The way Tahani says _Chidi,_ with that short i in the middle, is far more interesting in this moment to Eleanor than talking to Chidi—Ch _ee_ -di, damn it—probably ever has been, but she’s not about to tell Tahani that.

“Love of my life, he is,” Eleanor says instead, because she’s a fucking idiot, and goes to get the phone. In the background, she hears the door click shut and the shower start, so when she slides to answer she hisses, “Chidi Anagonye when I get back to Phoenix I am going to _strangle you with my bare hands.”_

“Uh,” says Chidi nervously. “Did I miss something?”

Eleanor sighs. “Sorry. No. This is not about you at all. I just wish Tahani would hurry up and jump me as fast as you did.”

He’s rubbing his temples, she knows, with nervous energy. “Eleanor, she has—she’s got a crippling fear of rejection, you understand that, right? I think it’s going to have to be you.”

“Bloody hell,” comes Simone’s voice. “Is she still whining about Tahani?”

“For the last six months, yeah,” Chidi’s muffled voice responds.

“Oh fuck you both with a rusty pole too,” Eleanor says irritably.

“Yeah,” Chidi says, his voice clearer now. “Love you, Eleanor.”

“Love you too. Kiss Simone for me.”

“On it,” Chidi says, and hangs up.

Eleanor sits there, just doing nothing, for a good ten minutes, and then flees when she hears the water turn off. She finds the kitchen only after running into a man who may or may not be the same butler from yesterday, who gives her directions after a suspicious once-over.

There’s a chef, because of course there’s a fucking chef, these rich fucks probably have people to shit for them. Kamilah’s at the table, fully dressed, and abruptly Eleanor feels embarrassed that she’s braless and wearing her old comfy socks with the holes in them, but fuck it. Humiliation makes her stronger and meaner. She’s like the Hulk of redirecting her shame. “So you’re Kamala?” she asks indifferently, saying the wrong name on purpose. “Tahani’s sister? Or do you work here?”

Kamilah looks disgruntled for an instant before the sneer returns. Eleanor thinks about her father chiding her, when she was still young enough that time was still disconnected from memory, not to make faces, or she’d go through life stuck with crossed eyes and a lolling tongue, forever a stranger in her own body. In an unpleasant instant of compassion, she wishes someone had been around to warn Tahani’s sister. “It’s Kamilah,” she says stiffly. “Who on Earth are you?”

Eleanor badly wants to respond, _Tahani’s fiancée, you bitch,_ but doesn’t. “Tahani’s plus one,” she says instead. “I got in yesterday. This place is a fucking maze. You should put up maps. Like it might genuinely be a fire hazard.”

Kamilah looks pensive. “That might actually be a good idea,” she ponders. “I don’t think we’ve ever had someone like _you_ here before, but obviously _anything_ is possible. Wouldn’t want someone to burn to death. You’re quite right.”

Damn. The bitch is _good._

“Would you care for breakfast?” Kamilah asks, like she’s going to fucking make it for Eleanor and not just tell someone else to do it. But Eleanor can’t find a way to turn it into a dig, and she’s abruptly kind of exhausted, so she just nods.

Kamilah walks over to the chef and murmurs to her, and she nuzzles her head against the woman’s chin once it seems that Eleanor isn’t looking. Eleanor hates it, this compassion she keeps feeling, because that tiny moment of closeness makes her into a real person instead of the looming villain that she’s always envisioned from Tahani’s tellings. And, too, this instant of witness makes something else clear. She knew from day one that Tahani’s parents never loved her, but they probably never loved Kamilah either, because if they couldn’t love Tahani, whose very presence is like a beacon which engenders devotion—well, they must be incapable.

Kamilah returns to the table, sitting across from Eleanor again, and they both sit there in a vacuum of silence. Just because Eleanor understands why she’s cruel, and pities her, doesn’t mean she suddenly wants to be buddies. After a while Eleanor’s phone buzzes.

 _Where are you?_ Tahani wants to know.

 _at breakfast w/ur bitch sister,_ Eleanor sends back. _i am seriously impressed that u didnt murder her as a child_

She really hopes things aren’t weird after the whole… whatever the fuck happened earlier.

Tahani trails in a few minutes later, fully dressed, naturally, and sits down next to Eleanor, absentmindedly kissing her cheek. Eleanor relaxes, both at the retention of their easy intimacy and that Tahani evidently has no hard feelings about the whole soul-baring thing that happened earlier. She supposes Tahani wouldn’t have invited her here at all if she had any real doubts about her, and wasn’t willing to fight through whatever awkwardness might prod for snags in the thread which binds them.

“Oh my _God,”_ Kamilah says loudly, then lowers her voice, thank God. “You’re _shagging_ her?”

Eleanor fights the urge to bare her teeth or growl or do something else similarly primitive and unnecessary. Tahani, to her left, says, “Kamilah, _really,_ have you no _manners?”_ and then confirms Kamilah’s incorrect suspicion when she grabs Eleanor’s hand, which unfortunately hits just the right angle so that the diamond band gleams under the too-bright kitchen lights.

“You’re fucking _engaged?”_ Kamilah marvels, though her voice stays low. “Tahani! _Duffah oja.”_ She sends her sister a look almost resembling camaraderie, or maybe impressed respect. “Mum’s going to _shit.”_

“Probably during Dad’s aneurysm,” Tahani mutters, and Kamilah grins at her, all teeth, and suddenly Eleanor doesn’t hate Kamilah at all anymore, she can see the real-ass human being who’s emerged now that the enemy is their parents, and not each other. She moves her chair right next to Tahani’s, leans against her arm, then reaches down and draws her hand up so she can kiss its palm. Tahani barely even twitches, just reaches up to wrap her arm around Eleanor’s shoulder, and God, that kiss was worth it but they didn’t need to practice, this is easier than breathing. Kamilah’s look, directed at their hands, is nearly fond.

“Your fiancée is great,” Kamilah says with a fierce grin, a mean glint in her eye that Eleanor kind of likes now that it’s not targeting her. “She came down here and called me _Kamala,_ and then said we should have, like, fire exits because this place would probably make Borges weep out of sheer confusion. I was a bitch about it but like, that’s definitely true.”

“My goodness, it is,” Tahani exclaims. She ruffles Eleanor’s hair and kisses the top of her head. “How’s your art been going, _behen?”_

“You care now?” Kamilah snaps, some instinct in her gut taking over, and then guiltily she says, “Sorry. Habit. It’s been going very well.”

She talks about galleries and artists and techniques which Eleanor can’t parse, so instead she lets the flow of their words wash over her. It’s unexpected, that they have an ally where they thought they’d have an enemy, but it’s good too. Eleanor supposes their parents must be, like, not just sociopaths but fucking monsters if Tahani can be friendly with Kamilah like this now. Bonding over hate. She eyes Kamilah, appreciating the frankly dykey vibe she’s got going on, and now that Eleanor’s looking at her like a person and not an enemy, she can see the same tension in her face that lives in Tahani’s, but sharper, harsh, because she was the golden child, always thought they might love her if she was good enough or successful enough. Maybe she still thinks that.

“Incoming,” the cook calls over to them all. Tahani jerks away from Eleanor like she’s the fucking electrified dinosaur fences in _Jurassic Park._ A few seconds later Mr. Al-Jamil walks into the room.

“Coffee,” he says, barely even conscious. The chef hands it to him and he takes several large sips before sighing, relaxing, and saying, “Thank you, Betsy.”

“‘Course, Mr. Waqas,” Betsy says, which, well, that’s creepy. Eleanor thought that people only addressed each other like that in old slave memoirs, but apparently it happens in the real-ass universe that she inhabits. She has a fleeting urge to kill Tahani’s dad, but tamps down on it, hard and vicious.

“Ah,” Waqas says. _“Betā._ Tahani. How odd to see you in the same room at the same time without any broken bones.” He looks displeased by this. Then he directs a gaze to Eleanor that makes it clear that he thinks she’s less interesting and useful than pond scum on his shoe soles. “This is your friend, then, Tahani?”

“Father, this is Eleanor Shellstrop,” Tahani says stiffly. “Eleanor, this is my father, Mr. Waqas Al-Jamil.”

Eleanor holds out her hand to shake, but doesn’t stand. “A pleasure, Waqas,” she says, suppressing the nasty inflection which wants to come. “Your daughter’s the best person I know.” Now, she thinks, is probably not the time to make a crack about Janet, and Tahani is evidently _psychic_ because she presses a warning heel into Eleanor’s sock. “Thank you for letting me stay in your home. It’s…” she tries and fails to think of a flattering adjective. “Humongous.”

The heel on her foot grinds down sharply.

“I mean, lovely,” Eleanor amends, jerking her foot loose. Tahani kicks her calf in retaliation.

“I hope your stay is productive,” Waqas says, whatever the fuck _that’s_ supposed to mean, and then he sighs and says, “Betsy, would you bring my breakfast to my study, please?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Waqas,” Betsy says. She rolls her eyes expansively when he’s out of sight, and Eleanor grins at the sight. Apparently _everybody_ hates Tahani’s parents.

Kamilah lets out a cackle. “I _really_ like you,” she says, directly to Eleanor this time. “‘Humongous.’ God, he hates you already, and he doesn’t even know you’re defiling my big sister.” She shakes her head, her grin huge, and says, “And you first named him, too. Tahani, you must let me sing at your wedding.”

 _I wish,_ Eleanor thinks, but she says, “If you’re not back to breaking each other’s bones by then, sure.”

Kamilah’s face sours. “That was one time,” she mutters. “Anyway. Nice to see you growing a spine for once, _aapi.”_

Tahani’s clearly hiding a smile. “Like you’d be able to distinguish a spine from the stick up your arse,” she says with absolutely no hostility, and blanches when Kamilah messily kisses each of her cheeks.

“Well, she’s happy,” Eleanor says as she leaves. “I was kind of expecting her to try to kill me. With, like, a sword or something. Is she gay too?”

The ‘too’ slips out, though it could probably plausibly be cover for—the fucking empty room, nope, that’s a no go. But Tahani doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know,” she says. “We don’t communicate, really.”

“I don’t know whether that’s sad,” Eleanor says. “I’ve gotta admit, I kind of like her.”

Tahani looks hurt. Eleanor realizes, a jolt of clarity coming to her in something like an epiphany, that at least part of the reason Tahani’s waited so long to make her move, and the reason she brought her _here,_ to this haunted place, before doing so, is to appease the mean, insecure voice that’s been insisting this whole time that Eleanor would—like everyone Tahani has ever met—prefer Kamilah to her inadequate big sister, once she met her.

Eleanor glances around and, spotting no one, trails her fingers up along the curve of Tahani’s cheek. “I like her,” she says gently, hyper-aware of Tahani’s fear, “because she reminds me of you. The same rage, the same acerbic wit, the same bravery. She’s not nearly as kind as you are, but I—babe, how could I ever bring myself to hate anyone who has that much of you in them?”

Tahani nods, but doesn’t look up. Softly, Eleanor taps her chin, waiting until she looks back up into Eleanor’s eyes. Tahani’s expression is one Eleanor recognizes from Jason’s face after Janet or Michael or Simone has bailed him out of the jug once again: hope, the determination not to hope, despair at the failure to stop oneself from doing so anyway. Wonder, that disappointment hasn’t won. Fear, that trusting that hope will be a mistake. It’s all significantly more moving when it plays across Tahani’s features, because Tahani is reacting to a lifeline after a lifetime of rejection instead of yet another drunken failure to get away with setting some random guy’s speedboat on fire.

“Your defenses, I’d be willing to wager, were built against the same enemy,” Eleanor says. “But you built them around your whole selves, from every side, and lost each other in the process. I think it’s okay to be sad about that lost chance, even if those walls are too old to tear down now.”

An extended metaphor. Chidi would probably give her a sticker. No, he’d _definitely_ give her a sticker. Really he should be teaching twelve year olds, not college, but unless they open up a Greek-style Forum in Phoenix he’s pretty much screwed. God, Eleanor misses him.

Tahani sighs, a few tears slipping out of her eyes. “Probably,” she admits. “Although I do want to connect with her, of course.” Then she glances at her phone and says, “Good lord. It’s only eight.”

“Literally like five different emotionally exhausting things have happened in the last two hours,” Eleanor says, grabbing Tahani’s hands. “I think we should either blow off shopping or telling your parents. Maybe we can—”

“Telling us what?” comes a woman’s voice, and Jesus fucking Christ is this the longest day of all time or does God just have a grudge against them? How can they have this whole entire fucking ginormous house and _still_ each find them?

“It’s not important,” Eleanor says at once. “I’m Eleanor, by the way, I’m with Tahani.”

“Manisha Al-Jamil,” says the woman impatiently. “Telling us what?”

“She won’t let it go,” Tahani mutters to Eleanor. “She never does.”

Eleanor sighs. “I guess you should go get Waqas and Kamilah,” she says. Manisha stares her down. “Or… I can do that… except for the part where I’ve gotten lost four times in the past two days…”

Manisha sighs. “Come on.” She starts off without waiting for them to follow.

“So much for our backstory,” Eleanor mutters to Tahani. Tahani sighs and grips her hand.

They trail Manisha into what has to be Waqas’s study. The room is huge, big windows streamlining sunlight onto the huge wood desk and the leather chairs. Books line one wall, also leather-bound; Eleanor resists the urge to get up and read through their titles.

Manisha stands behind the desk, one hand on Waqas’s chair. They look like they’re posing for a painting, unsettlingly still and expressionless. After a moment, Kamilah comes in, thudding down into a chair and kicking her feet up onto the desk, legs crossed. Eleanor suppresses a grin.

“Tahani and her _friend_ have something they want to tell us,” Manisha announces, somehow barely moving her lips. Eleanor grimaces. Kamilah, she sees out of the corner of her eye, does the same. Well. At least they have something like an ally, in this.

“Tahani?” Waqas prompts, his voice like a gavel slamming down a life sentence. “What is it you want to say?”

“Mother, Father, you’ve both met Eleanor,” Tahani begins. Eleanor stays quiet. However Tahani wants to play this, it’s her call. Eleanor’s just moral support. And backup. And the subject of their scornful derision. “She _is_ my friend—my dearest friend, actually, but she’s also—she’s also—”

Kamilah finishes the sentence she can’t seem to complete. “They’re together. Engaged, in fact.”

A few beats pass, and then very carefully Waqas says, “What was that, _betā?”_

“We’re getting married,” Tahani says, a note of defiance in her voice. “I thought you might like to know.”

There’s another beat of silence, and then everybody starts yelling at each other in what Eleanor thinks might be Arabic or Hindi, all at once. Eleanor watches this for a minute, then rises and moves to the back of the room, leans against the wall, and calls Janet.

Jason answers. “They’re nonverbal today. You’re on speakerphone. What’s going on?”

“They switched languages so I wouldn’t understand,” Eleanor complains. “I need a translator. Do you know what they’re saying, Janet?”

“Yes,” Jason answers after a second. “Urdu. Before-now, parent-two speak. Move closer so we can hear them better.”

There’s a lag in the translation, because it’s going from Urdu to Janet, who isn’t actually _fluent_ in every single language, they’re fluent in ASL and English and Spanish and Vietnamese (which is still two and a half better than Eleanor, Jesus), they just remember everything they read and hear and luckily for Eleanor they’d apparently picked up an Urdu textbook at some point. Then Janet has to translate their probably un-nuanced, maybe even straight-up wrong understanding into ASL, which Jason repeats back to Eleanor in a garbled transliteration of spoken English. So by the time Eleanor’s parsed all of that she’s the sixth man down the game of Telephone, and it’s a testament to Janet’s sheer brilliance that she understands anything the Al-Jamils are saying at all. And to their and Jason’s kindness, that they hadn’t even hesitated.

Here’s Eleanor’s understanding of the conversation, more or less:   

 

> **WAQAS:** How can you do this, Tahani? Do you not respect your elders?
> 
> **TAHANI:** I love her, Father, I couldn’t—
> 
> **MANISHA:** What will people do? Your [unknown] will follow us around everywhere we—
> 
> **KAMILAH:** Do not forget that she is poor, [don’t know], Mother, she is also not an acceptable _rich_ [cake?].
> 
> **TAHANI:** You’re not helping, sister.
> 
> **WAQAS:** This cannot work out for you, Tahani. She must return to whatever horrible place in which you [discovered?] her.
> 
> **KAMILAH:** Are you mad? What will people do indeed? They will say that you are so [unknown] that you will not even let Tahani keep her fiancée in the same house as you. [Janet notes that this was phrased as a question, but they don’t know how to translate it as one.]
> 
> **MANISHA:** [unknown], daughter. Are you trying to punish your father and me? Do you really love this woman? Or are you just trying our attention again? Because you certainly have our attention _now—_
> 
> **TAHANI:** Good grief! Of course I love her, why else would I bring her around _you?_ I’ve never loved anyone so much! Haven’t you ever felt like it’s just, it’s _spring,_ every time, everywhere, when you’re around a person?
> 
> **KAMILAH:** You act as though they’re capable of love, elder sister.
> 
> **WAQAS:** Be _quiet,_ Kamilah! Tahani, why are you doing this? Do you just hate us? Are you so determined to [unknown] us that you would—

 

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Eleanor says, finally interrupting, even though it kind of is given the whole ‘fake engagement’ thing. “Tahani can’t help who she loves. And nobody cares anyway, except for the two of you.”

They all stop and stare at her. Eleanor waggles her phone at them and grins meanly. Waqas mutters something. “Me, God aid,” Jason supplies.

Eleanor looks at Waqas and Manisha. “Do you want my friends back in Arizona to keep listening to you eviscerate your daughter, or do you want to go ahead and include me in the conversation?”

Manisha rubs her temples. Kamilah visibly stifles a laugh. Tahani’s looking at her like she just hung not only the moon, but every star in the sky along with it.

“Yes, fine,” Waqas says.

Eleanor smiles at him. “Great. Thanks for the help, J Squared. Love you guys.”

“Love you too!” Jason chirps, and Eleanor hangs up. She moves back to sit next to Tahani, crossing her arms as she does so. Tahani clings to her forearm, so Eleanor forces herself to relax in order to thread their fingers together.

“She’s resourceful, I grant you that much,” Waqas says grudgingly. “But you— _Eleanor—”_ He says her name like a curse. “Surely you must understand the position this puts our daughter in. How it makes her look. If you love her, as you claim, should you not want what is best for her?”

Eleanor frowns, and, for once, thinks before she speaks. “I do want what’s best for her,” she says finally. “I’m just not sure that ‘what’s best for her’ is throwing away happiness to appease a few homophobes. It’s obvious to me that you’ll never approve of her even if she marries, like, a prince. So why shouldn’t she marry me, when I’d do absolutely anything for her?” _Including trying to reason with you assholes, instead of taking her away from here forever?_ “It’s not 1913 anymore. I meant it when I said nobody cares.”

 _“Betā,”_ Manisha says, turning to Kamilah, “can you not make Tahani see reason?”

Kamilah pulls her feet off the desk, squares herself, and turns to face her parents. “If you’ll forgive me saying so,” she says, in a tone of finality, “I rather think she finally _has.”_

Manisha rubs her temples again and mutters incoherently.

“Very well,” Waqas says, after an impressively drawn-out sigh. “I can see that you will not see sense. Do try not to make Cousin Sahar’s wedding _entirely_ about you, Tahani.”

This is evidently a dismissal, because Kamilah hops up, and Tahani pulls Eleanor up off the couch too. Belatedly, she realizes that Tahani’s gripping her hand so tightly that her fingers feel like static. But she doesn’t try to loosen her grip, just follows them out and away, away, away from those fucking awful people.

Nobody speaks for a few minutes, until Kamilah has led them all outside to a _fucking tennis court_ that Tahani had missed on their tour yesterday. When the door slams shut, Kamilah whoops and pumps her fist. “Suck it, Mum and Dad!” she yells.

Tahani lets out a wordless shout of glee and kisses Eleanor right on the mouth, and then all over her face, and then hugs her tightly. Eleanor flexes her hand until feeling returns to it. “Oh, darling, you were brilliant!” Tahani enthuses. “Wonderful, absolutely wonderful—what a stroke of brilliance, calling Janet—and Jason, I presume—oh, you were so brilliant.” She kisses Eleanor again, apparently too caught up in her excitement to hesitate. Eleanor’s really fucking glad she broke the seal on that earlier. “Oh, _behen,_ wasn’t Eleanor just incredible?”

“I can see why you asked her to marry you,” Kamilah says. “Not many people who could stand up to Mum and Dad like that.” She gives the both of them a wry look. “I suppose she’s rubbed off on you.”

Tahani looks at Eleanor with unbearably soft eyes. Eleanor wants to declare her eternal love, or scream, or kiss her again, but this time with more feeling than Tahani could ever know what to do with, not if she had ten thousand hearts inside her. She wants to burst into song. She wants to punch herself in the face.

“Yes,” Tahani says. She’s still gazing at Eleanor. “I rather think she has.”

 

 

 

_a May Saturday, muggy  
Sahar’s getting married!_

“...and this is Avneet, and this is Inara, and this is Banafsheh, and this is Nikita, and this is Zerlinda, and this is Hafizah, and this is Safiya, and this is…”

Eleanor leans over and whispers in Tahani’s ear. “Are they gonna expect me to remember all these names?”

Tahani had woken her up punishingly early that morning to get “decent clothes”; Eleanor’s still plotting a suitable revenge (though she’ll later admit, begrudgingly, that having tailored clothes really is extraordinarily comfortable).

Tahani’s various extended relatives had started arriving that morning, thankfully, which had excised a bit of the previous day’s tension. Tahani’s parents are still livid, that much is clear, but having people in the house to judge their behavior has stopped them from being overtly hostile. And Sahar, thankfully, isn’t homophobic—when Tahani had introduced her earlier as “my fiancée, Eleanor,” Sahar had just blinked before she’d exploded into a stream of congratulations and oh how wonderfuls. Eleanor likes her a lot.

“No,” Tahani whispers back. “All these people learned how when we were young. Nobody expects you to have the proper training.” She kisses away Eleanor’s glare, earning them a few anonymous dreamy sighs in the process. Eleanor flags down the butler-waiter-guy for another mimosa, trying to ignore the feel of Manisha’s dagger-eyes from the head of the table.

Despite all her bravado, the truth is that Tahani’s parents intimidate her. It’s not that she cares what they think of her—the opinions of homophobes have never mattered to her. Growing up openly bisexual in the 80s and 90s, it had been kill herself or be herself, belligerently and unapologetically so. There had never been a question which path Eleanor would choose.

But _Tahani_ cares what they think, which means it matters to Eleanor too. And that means that she needs to—for Tahani’s sake, not theirs—try to make a decent impression. Which is where the anxiety comes in: Eleanor’s always hated rich people, in the abstract way that she hates war and poverty and earthquakes. She’s never bothered to learn how to make them like her, because she’s never _wanted_ them to like her.

She knows a little bit, from Tahani’s parties and Chidi’s professor friends, but even that wasn’t like this, it wasn’t people with old money, aristocracy. There’s a whole different code for all this, and Eleanor doesn’t even know the language it’s written in. But she’ll try, for Tahani. And she supposes it’s maybe better if she’s a little bumbling, all things considered; because as much as Tahani obviously has an unconscious desire for her parents’ approval, she’s outright stated her desire to embarrass them. Eleanor can most certainly oblige that one.

After the endless introductions are done, there comes food, so much Eleanor almost makes herself sick on it. Ten kinds of bread and weird egg and fish dishes and appetizers that make the table groan and parfaits and meats and light cocktails that Eleanor’s never heard of, crepes and polenta and roasted vegetables and french toast and quiches. Eleanor hopes distantly that the staff gets to eat what’s left over, and doesn’t just throw it away, because there’s only fifty or so people here, and they couldn’t eat all of this if they had a week to do it.

The presence of the staff itself is odd to her, in part because it doesn’t seem odd to anybody else. They’re skilled at making themselves invisible, but Eleanor’s never been waited on hand and foot like this. It makes her feel like she’s playing pretend, and a little bit like an asshole. She does her best to thank them when they come by and refill her mimosa over and over, though they’re so subtle and quick that she doesn’t always notice.

Once they’re all stuffed to bursting, one of Sahar’s friends breaks out the bachelorette games, all of which seem to rely on a knowledge of her that Eleanor doesn’t have. So she mostly just zones out, her head comfortably rested on Tahani’s shoulder, drifting in and out of near-somnolescence.

Chidi calls her around one, and she goes out to an alley where some of the employees are smoking to talk to him, relieved to escape the posturing for a minute, to hear a voice that’s not putting on airs. She complains so loudly about rich people and their excess that a few members of the staff send her appreciative smiles.

After she’s returned and all the games are done, Kamilah stands up and makes her way over to the string quartet, which has been playing intolerable classical renditions of various pop songs throughout the whole thing. She leans down and whispers to them for a moment, and then clears her throat loudly.

“If nobody minds,” she says, “I’d like to dedicate a song to Sahar.” The way she says this is confident, her mention of “minding” nothing more than an obsolete nod to politeness. It’s startling, to Eleanor, because yesterday Kamilah had been aggressive in her assertiveness. She can see now that Kamilah exists in an odd state of duality, of internal self-opposition, caustic about her self-worth in private but assured in public. She’s always been beloved, always been celebrated—so of course she knows that enthusiasm will come, even if she’s not sure that it should.

A ton of Sahar’s guests clap and cheer, Manisha loudest of them all. Sahar herself just smiles indulgently and says, “Of course, cousin.”

Eleanor _really_ likes her.

And then Kamilah says, _“Aapi,_ won’t you join me? It’s been too long since we sang together.” There’s a hint of mischief in her eyes, or maybe defiance, and suddenly Eleanor can see the Kamilah she met yesterday again, and where those two personalities meet to form a self.

It surprises kind of surprises Eleanor that they’ve _ever_ sung together, but Tahani looks so disbelievingly joyful at the proposal that she can believe it. Tahani exclaims, “Oh, of course!”

“How lovely!” Sahar says. Eleanor smiles over at her.

Tahani rises, kissing the top of Eleanor’s head as she does so. When she gets over to the musicians, Kamilah whispers in her ear, and then they start singing something Eleanor doesn’t recognize, but which makes Sahar clap and grin. Tahani glows like a red giant, and it makes Eleanor’s heart swell a little to see it. And much as she hates to admit it, Kamilah does have a lovely voice.

She glances over to Manisha, still a little self-conscious about how much Tahani’s been doting on her, and then she starts a little. The look in her eyes is just plain _ugly,_ sour and furious, surprising in both its intensity and its obviousness. She suddenly understands, with awful clarity, why Kamilah had appeared so defiant. Manisha—and probably Waqas—don’t _want_ Tahani and Kamilah to get along. They want them to be rivals, constantly at odds, and this sudden cooperation is a blatant and very public rejection of that aim.

She wonders why anybody would mold their children into enemies, and hard as she tries can’t come up with a clear answer. Maybe it’s so they won’t recognize their abuse, or fight back against it as a united front? It’s difficult to conceptualize anyone being so hateful towards their children with such clear-minded intention. Even Eleanor’s parents, who had often treated her quite badly, hadn’t done it because they hated her; they were just fucked up, alcoholics, had never recovered from their own shitty youths, and didn’t know how to raise a child. They’d loved Eleanor—they’d just sucked at it. She hates that the Al-Jamils make that seem like a blessing.

When Tahani comes back over to her, though, she’s still glowing, so Eleanor doesn’t spoil her rare taste of unqualified happiness. She just says, “You were great, babe.”

“We were, weren’t we?” Tahani says, and when Manisha looks over at them, Eleanor shoots her a glare so poisonous that she actually flinches and looks away.

When they finally escape brunch, Tahani appears to be as reluctant as she is to return to the imposing Al-Jamil Batcave, so they make their way along the cobblestone avenues until they find a cozy-looking little coffee shop. They get drinks (triple-shot espresso for Eleanor, cinnamon sugar latté for Tahani) and settle down out on the little seating area outside, breathing in the humid air of early summer.

For a while, they just sit there in comfortable silence, letting the tension bleed out of their bodies, watching the passersby go about their non-soap operatic lives. The diversity of their dress and manner is a bit jarring for Eleanor. She’s used to the sameness of Phoenix, the way everyone, regardless of race, looks a little bit like they’ve been sculpted into sandstone by the desert winds, wears as little clothing as possible, all of it casual. She’s startled, too, by the number of languages she hears, and wishes for a moment that she could summon Janet here, not to translate, but for the look of joy she knows their face would bear.

After a while, Tahani moves to speak, and Eleanor turns her attention back before the words come. Because, of course, even as she’s been absorbed in all the strangeness of London’s people, she’s stayed aware of Tahani. She’s always aware of Tahani, in the same way she’s aware of her own heartbeat or the sky above.

“Thank you again,” Tahani says, “for doing this for me. I know my family is—difficult, and you’re bearing a lot of the brunt of their hostility.”

“Of course,” Eleanor says, even though she thinks the word for them probably isn’t _difficult_ so much as it is _fucking batshit crazy._ “I’d do anything for you, Tahani, you know that, right? You ask, I’m there.”

Tahani blushes and beams, and Eleanor tries not to swoon at how her happiness is enough to part the gloomy clouds above. “Well,” she says, a little too genuine to be coy, “I still appreciate it. I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Eleanor insists, even though Tahani definitely does. “We’re friends.” For a minute, she hates the word with virulent passion. “Friends help each other.”

Tahani opens her mouth, then closes it, shakes her head a little, and laughs. “I don’t know where you came from, sometimes,” she says, “but whatever force led me to find you… I reckon it makes every bad thing that’s ever happened to me worth it.”

Eleanor reaches out and grabs her hand, because she knows if she opens her mouth love will spill out of it, unstoppable as the ocean, the only possible response to such a declaration. When she feels able to, she says, inadequately, “Me too, babe.” She resists the urge to sigh and pop the bubble of joy between them. She thinks that if she had to pick a moment to live in forever, she might choose this one. “Me too.”

 

 

 

_a sus as fuck Sunday, piously fraudulent  
Kamilah’s up to something_

Eleanor spends most of Monday with Kamilah, though not by choice. Kamilah’s will is powerful, she’s learning, but it’s also slippery, insidious, constantly shifting so as to evade even the most surgical of grasps. She doesn’t attack with seismic fury, like Eleanor, or inexorable weathering, like Chidi, or even with the intensity of Jason’s wild irrepressible brush fire whims. Kamilah is evolution, inescapable and better allied with than left to chance.

Not to say that Eleanor doesn’t like Kamilah, because she does—she’s got so much of Tahani in her that Eleanor can’t believe that only three days before, she had been ready to wage war against her, hadn’t seen it the second their eyes first met. But there’s a difference between liking and trusting, and Eleanor knows the latter is going to take a lot longer, might not be something Kamilah is even capable of anymore.

She thinks she understands why people go so crazy over her, because she’s certainly talented, but hell, she’s not that talented. (Eleanor ignores the memory of the shrine room. She’s not _that_ talented.) It’s less a cult of artistic appreciation than it is a cult of personality, because talking to Kamilah is like being annexed.

“I’m stealing Eleanor away from you today, _aapi,”_ Kamilah tells Tahani over breakfast. Eleanor rolls her eyes. It’s like she’s not even in the room.

Tahani sighs. “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

“No choice at all,” Kamilah says cheerfully.

“Have fun then, darling,” Tahani says. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“You can’t just contradict yourself like that and expect me not to comment,” Eleanor teases. She leans down for a kiss, though she pauses a few inches away from Tahani’s face. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.” She closes the gap. Tahani’s hand is on her neck when she pulls away. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Tahani replies, something breathless there.

For a moment they both forget about the world’s existence, reality narrowed down to their bodies and the space separating them.

Then Kamilah makes a gagging noise and yells, with a nasal whine that makes Eleanor glad she’s an only child, “Come on! Hurry the fuck up already!”

Eleanor rolls her eyes and Tahani sighs, and they leave.

Kamilah brings her to some upscale coffee shop where they charge fifteen dollars for a fifteen-cent cappuccino, probably just so rich people think it’s better somehow. They settle into a corner table, Eleanor against the wall so she can see the door. Kamilah’s big enough to take bullets in Eleanor’s stead. Though, she realizes with disgruntlement, they don’t have mass shooters on this side of the Atlantic, do they?

“So what’s all this about?” Eleanor asks. “I know you don’t want to be friends.” Eleanor apparently doesn’t either, given how she had just been thinking about the best way to use her as a human shield against a hypothetical mass shooter.

Kamilah looks almost hurt, but then she sniffs. “True,” she admits. “I want to determine your… intentions, so to speak.”

Eleanor laughs outright. “Oh my _God,”_ she manages. “You’re giving me the _shovel talk?_ You? You don’t even _like_ Tahani, what do you care if I’m gonna break her heart?”

“Are you?”

Eleanor sighs and rubs her temples. “Of course I’m not.” Kamilah still looks skeptical, so she barrels on. “Jesus Christ, why would I ever do that? I love her. I love her like—you probably couldn’t even begin to understand. I’ve loved her since the second I saw her. Full-on Edward Cullen-style. Why would I ever do anything to jeopardize that?”

It feels weird, to tell Kamilah all this stuff that Tahani might not even know herself. But it’s fucking _true._ She’s past the point where her stomach explodes into butterflies every time Tahani’s in her line of sight, but she still feels like her heart might burst with love for her when she thinks about it. She’s just beginning to transition from that to a horrible tenderness that’s extraordinarily difficult to contain. “I don’t know if she’s the love of my life, because I’m not done living yet. But she’s certainly the love of ever since I met her, and I can’t really imagine wanting to love someone else while she’s around. Or for a long time after that.”

Kamilah glares a little more, then loosens up and nods. “I do like her, you know,” she says resentfully. “It’s just difficult. Our parents are… I’m sure she’s told you.”

“Sure,” Eleanor agrees, because she has. “But if you want to take the chance to defend yourself, you might as well. Because from what Tahani’s told me—and what she hasn’t—you’ve never treated her much better than they did.”

The look in Kamilah’s eyes says that she wants to set Eleanor on fire. She takes an angry sip of coffee, then stands up abruptly and yanks on Eleanor’s arm, dragging her out of the café and into a deserted alley out back.

Eleanor leans against the gross brick wall, shaking her head as Kamilah lights a cigarette. “Those things’ll kill you, you know,” she says conversationally.

Kamilah sends her the V and takes a long drag. “They fucking pitted us against each other,” she hisses. “Every single time there was any way they could compare us, they took it, and they said I was better. Even when I wasn’t. Even when I _really clearly_ wasn’t.” She takes another drag. Eleanor coughs pointedly. “So maybe I’m more experimental and abstract, and Tahani loves pretty things. There’s nothing _wrong_ with liking pretty things! Pretty things matter too!”

“Sure.”

“Tahani just… I want to be nicer to her. I want to be supportive of her. But our parents put us up against each other, and I just, I’m fucking eight years old again suddenly. I can’t help it! How the _fuck_ am I supposed to help it?”

Eleanor hears the thing Kamilah’s not willing or able or aware enough to say, behind all that: _What if I stick up for Tahani, and they don’t love me anymore?_ She doesn’t think it would be helpful to point out that they never loved her in the first place.

She also doesn’t think it would be helpful to tell Kamilah to suck it up and try harder, because life’s not a middle-aged soccer mom’s meme-filled Facebook page and trying harder doesn’t actually _work_ that well when you’re up against trauma that’s two decades old and bone-deep. It would sure be fucking cool if it did, but it doesn’t.

Eleanor sighs. “Okay, Kamilah. I hear you. I’ll tell you something that’s gentle, because Tahani loves you and I know she would want me to be kind with you. Then I’ll tell you something that’s true, because you were truthful with me and that was brave. Cool?”

Kamilah takes another drag and nods furiously, her eyes down on the pavement.

“How you’re supposed to help it is probably an issue you ought to take up with a therapist, but I will say this. It sounds like you’ve got a choice between a good relationship with your parents or a good relationship with Tahani. It might be worth your time to consider which one matters more to you, and which one would be the best and most rewarding choice.” It doesn’t exactly take a doctorate in ethics and moral philosophy to know what the right answer is, but Eleanor just promised gentleness.

“The true thing is this,” Eleanor says, and lets her voice go to the cold and harsh and threatening place that it’s wanted to go since Kamilah grabbed her in the café. Talking to Kamilah might be like being annexed, but Eleanor never has been much of a joiner. “There’s a new fucking sheriff in town. I love Tahani like a goddamned hurricane, and I don’t really give a shit about your traumas and your hang-ups and your mommy issues. If you can’t start treating her with the respect she deserves, I will _fucking destroy you._ I don’t care how much money or power or influence you have. I’ll find a way. I am not going to spend another second letting you assholes treat her like garbage so you can feel better about yourselves. Believe me on that.”

Kamilah lights another cigarette. “I believe you,” she says coolly. “Message received.”

“Good,” Eleanor says. They stand there, silent, for a long time.

 

 

 

_a cloudy May Monday  
Eleanor and Ben, wound up_

Eleanor decides the next morning that she wants to do cheesy touristy shit, and Tahani obliges. In all honesty, it’s less about seeing Big Ben and the royal palace and the ferris wheel and more about getting the fuck away from Al-Jamil Estate. Eleanor has this feeling in the house that she’s not sure how to describe, but could probably be boiled down to _dread._ She tries not to think about what that must have been like for Tahani (and for Kamilah), growing up.

She can’t help it, of course. She lost the ability to do that right around the time that Chidi first handed her _Nicomachean Ethics,_ the asshole.

They go to Buckingham Palace first. Tahani offers to take her in to meet Prince William, which Eleanor vetoes so vehemently that Tahani’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm. “Let’s just go get lunch,” Eleanor says hastily. “Fish and chips is about as touristy as it gets, right?”

“Quite right,” Tahani agrees, and they get fish and chips.

“What the hell!” Eleanor complains. “These are just French fries!”

“What were you expecting?”

Eleanor scowls. “Potato chips,” she admits, then, a little sullenly, “I guess this is better.”

Tahani grins at her with all of her beautiful, shiny, freakishly white teeth.

When they’ve finished eating the obligatory fish and chips, they just walk, taking in the city. They stop at random, at a souvenir shop so Eleanor can get tacky gifts for the ~~Bobcats~~ her friends, at every bookstore they see. (When Eleanor complains about lugging books around, Tahani gets the booksellers to ship them to Arizona, which is just—Eleanor loves her.)

After a while, Tahani’s face lights up, and then she—typically—drags Eleanor over to a museum. She makes a big fuss about how, oh, it’s the _National Gallery,_ but an old boring statue is an old boring statue no matter what label you put on it.

(Eleanor doesn’t know how all her friends ended up being such _fucking nerds.)_

But Eleanor doesn’t complain very much, because Tahani’s so excited and because she’s a sucker. And even though she doesn’t appreciate art the way Tahani so obviously does, it’s nice to see her so obviously relaxed for once, in her element as she gushes about Degas and Cezanne and Gentileschi. Seeing her happy and engaged makes it worth the trip, though Eleanor would still argue that Tahani’s more beautiful than anything any old fart produced with some oil paints.

By six, they’re both hungry again. Tahani leads her to an unexpectedly homey, unexpectedly hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant, and after they’ve ordered their curry (Tahani) and pad thai (Eleanor), they sit for a minute, basking in exhaustion.

“So,” Eleanor says after a moment. “How are you feeling about the whole… coming out to your parents thing?”

Tahani shrugs. “It’s all right,” she says. “I was going to have to tell them eventually. That I’m bi, I mean.” Eleanor isn’t sure if she means that she would have had to tell them about Eleanor, or that she would have ended up dating a woman at some point. She’s not sure she wants to know the answer. “How did it go with your parents?”

Eleanor shrugs back. “I never really had to tell them, about being bisexual,” she admits. “I wasn’t ever subtle about it. I remember coming home when I was, five or six maybe? Kindergarten. I had the hugest crush on this girl… I think her name was Frankie? She had, like, huge grey eyes and her hair all done up in twists with butterfly clips. And I told them all about her and how we were going to get married. And Donna was all like, well, that’s illegal. But Doug told me that if I wanted to marry her I was going to have to tell her that I wanted to first. So I did. We, you know, play-dated for a few weeks.” She smiles at the memory.

Tahani’s eyes are very soft. “That was good, of your father, to take you seriously like that,” she says. Eleanor still hates the man, but she’ll own up to that much. She’s heard enough horror stories to know how lucky she’s been. “I remember getting crushes on girls very early on as well, but my mother took me aside and told me that girls didn’t feel that way about other girls. When I dated a girl in secondary, I was fifteen, they made me change schools. And see a therapist.” She blanches. “Nasty old bastard, he was.”

Eleanor recoils. “Jesus,” she says. “That’s horrible.”

Tahani shrugs again. “I suppose,” she says noncommittally.

Eleanor reaches out and grips her hand. “It’s horrible,” she says fiercely. “Nobody should treat a child like that.”

Tahani’s eyes have gone very wide. She stares at Eleanor without blinking.

“You didn’t deserve that,” Eleanor says, in a tone which leaves no room for argument. “Your parents were _wrong,_ Tahani.”

Tahani nods and squeezes her hand. “Thank you,” she says, her voice uneven. “I guess you’re right.”

She doesn’t sound as sure as Eleanor would like, but she’ll take it. For now, anyway. She decides to change the subject to something less fraught. “So,” she says, her voice light, “how did you find this place, anyway?”

After dinner, which is astonishingly good, Tahani takes her to their last tourist spot: the London Eye. It’s kind of hard to comprehend how big it is, and the line makes Eleanor want to turn back. But Tahani goes over to one of the operators, and he apparently recognizes her (which is still fucking weird to Eleanor, even now), and lets them cut the line. Eleanor feels a little bad about it—but not bad enough to say no.

It moves slowly, revealing the city in all its immensity. It really is such a strange, wonderful place, mind-boggling to Eleanor in its perseverance. Everything here is so _old,_ built and rebuilt and cobbled over, crafted over the centuries into a kind of odd magnificence. America is so new, everything about it, values newness, is engaged in a perpetual quest to destroy itself.

She knows that the beauty of this place isn’t without its price. It’s the product of empire, of exploitation and destruction. Its grandeur is the product of the concentrated effort to annihilate everyone else, everywhere on Earth.

But up here, looking out at what seems for a moment like the whole world—it’s still beautiful.

For ten minutes or so, she stands by the window, just taking it all in, and then she joins Tahani on the seats in the middle of the cart. She takes her hand and rests her head on her shoulder, and neither of them say anything, because they don’t need to. They’re together. That’s enough.

Eleanor wishes, with a kind of acrid intensity, that they could just stay here, watching this weird ugly ancient beautiful city from above, weightless and timeless, until her flight back home. They can’t, of course; life never does run that smooth. If it did, it wouldn’t be life at all. Fighting for happiness is what makes happiness matter.

But for the moment, she can pretend. Just for this moment, she can let things be simple. For now, she lets herself forget about the world, the Al-Jamils, homophobia and abuse and cruelty and struggle and strife, and just holds on to Tahani’s hand.

 

 

 

 _a tepid Tuesday, May  
did you_ actually _think Kamilah wasn’t up to something?_

Maybe it’d be more Jane Austen if they woke up curled around each other, spooning like otters, hands twined together, Eleanor’s lips pressed against Tahani’s neck, but life (unfortunately) isn’t an 18th-century romantic comedy. There’s plenty of repressed lesbianism (on Tahani’s side, at least), but not so much cutesy touches and love confessions. Yeah, Eleanor could definitely go for the love confession part.

They don’t wake up curled around each other, is the point. Eleanor’s always been a deeply terrible bedmate, snoring, drooling, hogging the covers, the works. And Tahani’s even worse—she’s never had to share a bed, and it shows by the way that she somehow starfishes across the whole California King mattress, elbowing Eleanor’s chin and trapping her under her beautiful, beautiful legs. It’s _really_ not romantic.

It does spell a kind of deeper intimacy, which Eleanor’s not deliberating on yet. Not for five more days, anyway.

Tahani jostles her awake at eight exactly, like she always does, the absolute freak. “Come on, love,” she calls. “We’ve a whole day ahead of us!”

Eleanor turns over, shoves a pillow over her head, and flips Tahani off. Tahani laughs and jerks the comforter off of her. Eleanor is in love with her.

As they’re getting ready for the day (after facing down Manisha and Waqas Al-Jamil braless and comfy-socked, Eleanor has adopted Tahani’s get-dressed-first routine), Kamilah busts into the room. Eleanor hurries to finish pulling her shirt on. “Hurry up, losers!” she yells, sounding so Regina George-esque that for a fleeting, horrible moment Eleanor is almost attracted to her. “I have a surprise for you!”

She leaves as abruptly as she’d entered, Tahani’s irritated growl following close behind.

They hurry up, though, because if Eleanor’s learned anything over the last week it’s that Kamilah always gets her way. Easiest to just give it to her in the first place.

“What’s all this about, then?” Tahani asks, irritated, when they join Kamilah in the hallway.

“It’s a _surprise,”_ Kamilah says again, in that tone of hers which somehow manages to convey condescension without any actual condescension coloring her voice. “Come along, a car’s waiting for us outside.”

They follow, the battle lost before its declaration. Kamilah rambles as they head over about more incomprehensible art stuff and a fundraiser next month and God knows what else. Eleanor falls asleep in Tahani’s lap amongst the waves of Kamilah’s unceasing voice.

Tahani shakes her when they arrive. “We’re here, darling,” she tells Eleanor gently, smoothing out her clothes as they walk.

“Wonder what all this is about,” Eleanor murmurs to her.

“God knows,” says Tahani irritably. Eleanor suppresses the urge to kiss the frown off her face, tweaking her nose instead.

“Come in, then,” Kamilah yells, though she’s right next to them, and she throws open the huge, elaborately carved doors, and—

_“SURPRISE!”_

The room is full of people (is that the _Downton Abbey_ lady?), festive and glittery, and contains a dance floor and a bar and a huge festive table with pink and green place settings.

“You’re getting married, _aapi!”_ Kamilah shouts. “I know this week is all about Sahar, but I wanted to do something for you and Eleanor too.” She smiles. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Tahani bursts into tears. “Of course I don’t, _behen._ This is all so—so—” She cries more, apparently unable to articulate any further.

Eleanor pulls Tahani to her and rubs her back. Over her shoulder—well, okay, sort of past her side—she says, “Thanks, Kamilah. This is uncharacteristically nice of you.”

Kamilah doesn’t take the bait. “Of course,” she says, in what Eleanor finally identifies as her Public Kamilah voice. “Anything for my big sister.”

Tahani sniffles and pulls away. Eleanor grabs the handkerchief out of her dress pocket and wipes her face carefully. “You good, sweetheart?”

Tahani nods tremulously.

“Good.” Eleanor grabs her face before she can straighten up again and kisses her, hard. A good half of the room coos at them. “Yeah, I know, we’re adorable. You wanna show me off, babe?”

Tahani smiles and nods and does. Eleanor takes it gracefully, trying and failing to commit the names to memory (except the celebrities, and Sahar, who she can already identify). She swipes a champagne flute after a few minutes, but doesn’t go too fast—she wants to remember this, seeing Tahani glowing and ebullient like this. It’s a hell of a view.

They eat, oysters and caviar and eggs benedict and some kind of fruit parfait thing that’s obscenely delicious. Eleanor gets progressively tipsier (it’s just champagne, but that rationalization doesn’t work with her liver, apparently) and therefore more affectionate, randomly kissing Tahani whenever she floats back into her vision, a homing beacon for Eleanor’s love.

“How did you two meet?” asks a melodious voice. When Tahani doesn’t answer, Eleanor realizes the question is directed to her, and she turns to look directly into the face of _fucking Beyoncé Knowles-Carter._

Eleanor’s sober enough not to gibber, but it’s a close thing. “Um,” she says. “Um. Shit. Sorry. Um, my—surrogate uncle, I guess, is the closest analogue, he has this bar in Phoenix? Arizona? Called the Neighborhood? And Tahani came in after this bee fundraiser thing and I saw her and, I mean”—she shrugs, a little helplessly—“I fell in love with her, you know? I mean, how could I not?” She looks back over at Tahani, who’s entertaining the masses as always. “So I talked to her, and here we are.”

“That’s lovely,” says _fucking Beyoncé Knowles-Carter._ “You two obviously have something very special. It’s important to treasure that. Love like that doesn’t happen every day, you know? When it does, you’ve got to hold on with all you’ve got.” She smiles. Eleanor dies a little bit. “You must be a very special person if Tahani’s fallen in love with you. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“You too!” Eleanor says, strangled. “Uh. _Lemonade_ is really good. ‘Hold Up’ is, like—it’s awesome. I wanted to go around smashing up random people’s car windows for, like, a month.”

“I know,” _fucking Beyoncé Knowles-Carter_ says, gentle amusement in her eyes. “But thank you.” She stands, placing a gentle hand on Eleanor’s shoulder. “I really am so delighted for you both.”

 _I think I just got touched by an angel,_ Eleanor thinks dazedly. Then she blinks rapidly and turns back to Tahani. “You’re friends with _Beyoncé?”_ she demands in a frantic whisper. Tahani laughs at her and kisses her dumb face.

Later, after breakfast has been cleared, Kamilah stands up and clinks her glass. “If you’ll tolerate me for a moment, everyone, I’d like to say a few words.” The chatter quiets. Kamilah turns to them, a weird grin on her face. She’s probably not used to things being about Tahani, for once, even if she’s the cause. “Eleanor, I wasn’t sure about you when we first met. I didn’t know where the hell you came from, what you wanted from my sister, or what she saw in you. But over the last week, I’ve come to understand what it is she sees.” Her eyes turn serious, almost sincere. “You’re a really great person, Eleanor. You’re sure of yourself, and you’re funny and brave. Most importantly, you love my sister better than I imagine anyone else ever could.” She smiles again. “Thank you, for that.”

Kamilah turns to Tahani. Eleanor feels her intake of breath and rubs a thumb over her hand. “Tahani, I’m so glad that you found someone. You two deserve one another.” She raises her glass high. “To Tahani and Eleanor!”

“Tahani and Eleanor!” everyone echoes. Eleanor locks eyes with Kamilah, nods, and takes a long, steady drink. Yeah. Whatever weirdness exists still, they can be allies in Tahani’s happiness.

Tahani rises, pulling Eleanor up with her, and Eleanor ignores her thanks and acknowledgments, still engaged in a silent staring contest with Kamilah. But Kamilah’s a great multitasker, or was listening, because she breaks off eye contact to nod at Tahani, and to say, “Well, thank you, everyone, for coming out on such short notice, and for listening to my dear sister and me gush. Let’s break out that dance floor, shall we?”

Conversation returns, along with laughter, and music. Tahani pulls Eleanor along to the dance floor, weightless, flying, hearts bursting out of her eyes.

Eleanor follows. She’d follow Tahani just about anywhere.

 

 

 

_a Wednesday, in May’s embrace  
Eleanor and Tahani get some rest_

On Wednesday, they do jack shit. Tahani lets her sleep in until _ten,_ and when she wakes up it’s to the sound of incomprehensible accents and sitcom sound effects. Eleanor blinks, cracks her eyes, then looks over at Tahani. “There’s a TV in the wall,” she says unnecessarily. “Did I know there was a TV in your wall?”

“Did you?”

Tahani rolls over to her and tucks Eleanor under her arm like a stuffed animal. Eleanor buries her head in Tahani’s shoulder. “I don’t think I did,” she says.

“Well.” Tahani smiles. “There’s a telly in my wall.”

“Say ‘telly’ again.”

Tahani laughs and complies.

Eleanor stretches, then burrows as best she can into Tahani’s skin. “I don’t want to do _anything_ today,” she moans. “I just want to lie in bed with you until we can go back to sleep.”

“That’s the plan,” Tahani says, and they follow through, though they do have to get up occasionally for bathroom breaks or to get the butler to get Betsy to send them up meals. They eat all three in Tahani’s bed, watching stupid comedies and napping off and on. It’s fucking _decadent._

A break really is something they’ve both been sorely needing. It’s a relief not to have to deal with Kamilah or Manisha or Waqas or the creepily everpresent staff. The only person Eleanor sees or speaks to is Tahani. (Other than Chidi, when he calls in the evening, but talking to Chidi doesn’t count as expending social energy. If Eleanor doesn’t speak with him every day or two, she withers up and has to be rehydrated like a tardigrade in extreme environmental conditions.)

It’s nice, too, to remember that drama or no, Eleanor really enjoys being around Tahani. Spending time with her is just, it’s _nice,_ it makes Eleanor feel good. Maybe it’s stupid, but they’ve been so busy, so focused on Tahani’s whole scheme, that breathless as they’ve left her, none of their interactions have been mindlessly simple and genuine and pleasant like this, not since Eleanor’s plane touched down last week. Letting go of all the anxiety and just spending time together is a much-needed reminder that Eleanor loves Tahani because Tahani is awesome and she makes her happy, not because she’s on some kind of crusade to protect her from the universe. Yeah, Eleanor wants to do all that, but it’s a byproduct of Eleanor’s love, not a component part.

They settle in for bed early. Eleanor makes it a point not to check the time. _God,_ she thinks, as she washes her face. _There are perfect days and there are perfect days and then there was_ today. _Perfect doesn’t seem like enough._

She walks back into the bedroom, and Tahani’s spread out across the bed, and for a second Eleanor can’t breathe. She watches her and yearns like she hasn’t been letting herself yearn, just stands there and _wants_ Tahani. She imagines what it would be like (what it will be like, with any luck) if they really were married, and Eleanor could crawl into the bed and thread her fingers through Tahani’s hair and kiss her, and it wouldn’t be desperate or wild or frantic, because Tahani would be a sure thing. She could touch her everywhere and know her touch was welcome, wanted, desired. She could go to sleep knowing that they wouldn’t just wake up together tomorrow, but every night for as long as there were nights and both of them were alive to see them. She doesn’t cry, but she does feel her heart aching, physically, worse than any blow to the sternum Eleanor’s ever experienced.

 _Just love me,_ Eleanor thinks, attempting without success to beam her thoughts directly into Tahani’s brain. _It’d be so easy. Nothing would even change._

Tahani blinks and scrunches up her nose, and Eleanor realizes she’s been staring. “Is there something on my face?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Eleanor says, though there isn’t. She reaches down and wipes invisible dust off Tahani’s perfect cheekbone. “There. Beautiful, as usual.”

Tahani smiles. “I can always count on you.”

They stare at each other for a moment, and then Tahani squeezes her. “Thanks again for doing this,” she says, her voice muffled by Eleanor’s shirt. “I know my family’s… a bit much.”

“Fucking crazy assholes, you mean,” Eleanor says, but it’s weak, because she’s trying to absorb Tahani into her bloodstream. “And of course. I’d do anything for you.”

Tahani shudders, and then lets her go and says, artlessly, “Good night, then.”

Eleanor sighs. “Good night, babe.” She crawls back into the bed, closes her eyes, and sleeps.

 

 

 

_a May Thursday  
Sahar’s still getting married, y’all!_

The day of the mehndi is cloudless, but still somehow dour. Tahani’s in a rotten mood from the second they wake up, slamming the bathroom door when Eleanor tries to ask about it. Fine, then.

It’s been getting to her, too, being here. The estate feels cut off from the rest of the world, the universe, like a pocket dimension of cold, uptight strictness, its physics defined by the presence of unacknowledged anguish. And it might be huge, but it’s still singular, and it’s confining in the exact same way that a studio apartment is. It’s kind of reassuring, in a way. The maw between Eleanor and these people isn’t as gaping as they’d like to think it is.

She thinks, too, that even wonderful as it was, the day off had made things worse for both of them. Now they have to go, once more, unto the breach, after tasting how nice it is to _not fucking do that._ She’s getting tired of all this. She misses Chidi and Simone and Janet and _Phoenix,_ misses the seguaroes and the sand and the sun and random people cursing at her in the street. Home’s home, ridiculous and ugly as it can sometimes be.

She spends the most of the morning and mid-afternoon in the second library, the one in the East Wing. It’s huge and comfortable, with brown-toned leather armchairs and a cluster of tables in the center of the room, surrounded by rolling desk chairs. The bookshelves go all the way up to where the walls meet the vanishingly high vaulted ceiling. Tall, arched windows line the easterly wall, giving way to a spectacular view of a sloping hill leading down to a duck pond, cattailed and waterlilied.

Eleanor badly wants to try and climb the bookshelves so she can sit in the rafters, but decides against it. The last thing she needs is to fall and break her neck. The house is so stupidly huge—they might not find her body for days. So she settles down into an armchair facing the window and opens up a book, legs tucked beneath her body.

She tries to read, but mostly she stares out at the ducks or rereads the same few paragraphs of the book she’d grabbed at random over and over again, not comprehending the words there. This house is beautiful, but it’s evil, too, plain and simple, and that makes it hard to concentrate on anything but her own unhappiness. Especially without Tahani.

Chidi calls around noon, and his voice is like a balm. Eleanor asks him a random question about consequentialism just so she can hear the rise and fall of his tone without listening to any of the words. After a good half hour in which she absorbs nothing more than the comfort of his presence, Chidi stops long enough to get her attention and then says, “Are you listening to me at all?”

“No,” Eleanor says. Chidi sighs. “I just wanted you to keep talking.”

The clockwork-like reliability of Chidi’s nervous hand-wringing transcends vision or the distance of continents. “You holding up okay?”

“Not really,” Eleanor says, aware that she sounds stark and dull but too apathetic to try and hide it from him. “I’m pretty far past being ready to come home.”

“Do you need to leave early?”

Eleanor doesn’t respond for a minute, struck by the unconsidered reality of being able to leave, honestly considering it. But then she says, through a sigh, “No. It’s only four more days. And I should see this thing through. I owe Tahani that much.”

“Well,” Chidi says, and she can see him biting his lip, polishing his glasses on his sweater. “That’s kind of you, Eleanor. And for what it’s worth, you can call me whenever you need to.” He’s quiet for a moment. “We’re ready to have you back here too.”

Eleanor closes her eyes and pictures them. She can see Chidi, probably pacing around his office, sweater-vested and fidgety. Janet and Jason, who by the ambient noises are probably testing out another one of Jason’s culinary abominations. She wants to be there, to tell Jason to stop trying to combine cheese with sour patch kids, or whatever it is he’s on about this week. She misses them so much it aches.

“Thanks, Chidi,” she says finally. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Chidi says. They stay on the line, just breathing at each other, for a few more seconds. Then Eleanor hangs up and throws her book at the wall and screams soundlessly.

Talking to Chidi does give her enough peace of mind to read, though, so once she retrieves the book she manages despite herself to get absorbed in _Bleak House._ After about forty pages, a pointed cough disrupts her. She starts badly, then looks up into viciously cold eyes. Fuck.

“Hello, Manisha,” Eleanor says.

“Hello, Eleanor.” Manisha Al-Jamil looks completely indifferent to Eleanor’s existence. She stands to Eleanor’s right, towering over her. “I wasn’t aware that people of your… status enjoyed the finer arts.”

Eleanor snorts. “I wouldn’t exactly call Dickens fine art.”

“Oh?”

Eleanor ignores the warning hint to her tone. “Well, yeah. He was a pulp writer, wasn’t he? The only reason he describes everything in such lavish detail is because he got paid by the word. And he championed people of my ‘status’ too. He’s credited with opening literary fiction up to the poor with his serial publications. Hell, _A Christmas Carol_ is about how he thought rich people were so evil that they would have to get coerced by ghosts before they gave up a single cent of their fortunes.” She says all of this in a superior tone, even though she only knows it because she’d listened to Janet’s infodumping after Dickens had been a category on _Jeopardy!_

Manisha looks like she swallowed a lemon without peeling it. “I suppose you’re right,” she says stiffly. She just stands there for a moment, saying nothing. Eleanor doesn’t prompt her; she’s kind of hoping she’ll decide to just leave.

But Eleanor’s never been that fortunate. “You love my daughter?” Manisha asks.

Eleanor cocks her head, trying to see something in Manisha that indicates that she cares about her answer. It’s pointless. “Yes,” she says. “I love her.”

Manisha nods. “I suppose I can’t stop you, then.”

“From what?”

The ducks quack outside the window, and Eleanor turns her head to watch them attack a turtle en masse. Demonic little animals.

“From ruining her,” Manisha says.

Eleanor doesn’t look back from the window. “There’s nothing ruinous about love,” she says. “And there’s nobody on Earth who deserves love more than Tahani. Especially not after how long you kept her from knowing what it feels like.”

When she turns around, Manisha’s gone. Eleanor sighs and stares out the window again, the peace of Chidi’s voice stripped away from her like nail polish remover.

They leave at four, tension still palpable. It had been cut a little bit thinner by Tahani’s obvious relief when Eleanor had come back to their room— _Tahani’s_ room—to get ready. She hadn’t said anything, but she’d smiled with something like apology and helped Eleanor get dressed, the touch of her hands like a brand, searing her name down to the deepest level of Eleanor’s skin.

“So what is this mehndi thing, anyway?” Eleanor asks, in an inept attempt to prevent the mosquito-swarm of awkwardness from overtaking them entirely.

“It’s another party,” Tahani explains, not looking away from the window. “Sahar and Balil’s family will apply henna to their bodies, with each other’s names. You can get some too, if you like.”

“Oh,” Eleanor says. She doesn’t try to make conversation again.

The hall is bright and lively, and despite the weirdness with Tahani and Eleanor’s foreboding awareness of Kamilah’s general existence and Waqas and Manisha’s sour glances, she gets caught up in the festiveness of it all. There’s food and drink and music and the henna, which is gorgeous, makes everyone look like their arms are adorned with elaborate tattoo sleeves. Eleanor gets her left arm done, but is too antsy to sit still for the right.

Tahani refuses to enjoy herself, so eventually, after a number of entreaties, Eleanor ditches her to dance. She keeps looking back at Tahani, but she’s still just sitting there, petulant. Eleanor lets it go and gives herself over to the music. She can’t understand most of it, but a jam is a jam.

After a few songs, Kamilah comes out of nowhere and grabs her hands. She smells strongly of cigarettes and alcohol, but Eleanor doesn’t mind, just clasps her hands back. They dance.

“I’m really glad Tahani met you!” Kamilah yells, twirling Eleanor out.

“Me too!” Eleanor yells back, twirling back. “Thanks again for that party! It was nice!”

They grin at each other, for once without hostility, and dance. Eleanor dances and drinks and dances and drinks until she feels like she’s either going to throw up or fall down or both, at which point she returns to Tahani.

Tahani is still in the same place she’s been since the party began, sulking. Eleanor sits down next to her and nuzzles her unresponsive shoulder, takes her limp hand. They watch as the dancers part down the middle, revealing the bride and groom-to-be. Sahar stands at the far end of the hall, smiling like she’s won a Nobel Prize, or like she’s discovered she has three extra days on a bill she forgot to pay. Like she’s in love. She reaches out and curls teasing, beckoning fingers to Bilal, at the far side of the room, who shrugs, as if to say, “Who, me?” Sahar narrows her eyes, nods, and curls a single finger this time. Bilal dances over to her, and everyone claps in time with the music.

When he reaches her, he reaches out, but Sahar shoves his chest lightly, and he exaggeratedly falls backwards onto his hands, then springs up again with some kind of breakdancing flair. A line of female dancers intercept Bilal’s attempts to get back to Sahar, and he keeps trying to break through. They push him down over and over, and as the song crescendos, he stays on the ground at last. When the song slows again, Sahar’s friends retreat back to the sidelines.

Bilal crawls over to Sahar, who pushes his chin up with her sandal. Bilal makes a begging gesture, and then finally, Sahar lets him stand up, and takes his hands in hers. They dance amid a sea of cheers. Bilal kisses Sahar on the mouth, stars in his eyes. It’s obvious that they’re crazy about each other.

“Do you want that, someday?” Tahani asks Eleanor, in a voice like fulgurite.

“Want what?” Eleanor murmurs, tearing her gaze away from the dancers and down to their joined hands, to Tahani’s long, elegant, perfectly manicured fingers.

“To love like that,” Tahani says, gazing out at Sahar and Bilal. “To spend your life with someone. To know everything about them, good and bad and ugly and beautiful, and to decide, ‘Yeah. That one’s mine.’”

She blames her response on the alcohol. “I didn’t used to. For a long time. But then I met Chidi, and Jason and Janet and Michael and Simone and _you,_ and I think… maybe I’ve already made that choice.”

Tahani jerks her hand away abruptly. Eleanor starts. “You okay, babe?”

“I think I could use some air,” Tahani replies, which is a pretty clear _no,_ but she doesn’t invite Eleanor to join her as she bolts away, so Eleanor just sits there, empty-handed and bereft. She thinks, sourly, that maybe Tahani just doesn’t want her love at all. That hadn’t exactly been a positive response to yet another hopeless declaration of Eleanor’s affection. Maybe she’s done too much, and Tahani just wants this to be over so that Eleanor will leave her alone. Maybe—

This is why she hates getting this drunk. Her brain is never on her side.

“Hey there,” says a voice.

Eleanor tenses, turns, sees that it’s Sahar, relaxes again. “Hey, girl. Congratulations.”

“You’re Eleanor, right?” Sahar asks. She grabs Tahani’s vacated chair and turns it so that she can sit with her legs bracketing the back, rests her head on the top. The brown henna on her arms wraps around her skin like a budding desert willow.

“Yeah.”

“I know we’ve met, but I’ve met so many new people this week that I wasn’t sure,” Sahar says conspiratorially. Eleanor likes her a lot. “Though you’re kind of hard to forget, what with all the ruckus you and Tahani have been stirring up.”

“Sorry about that,” Eleanor says, for the first time actually feeling a bit bad about it. Sahar is so nice. She deserves to have her wedding actually be about her.

But Sahar just grins. “Are you kidding? It’s _great._ Aunt Manisha must be losing her mind. Stuffy old cow.”

Eleanor blinks, then laughs uproariously. “I knew it!” she says. “Does _anybody_ like those people?”

“No,” Sahar says, still grinning. “Not a person on Earth. I bet even Pope Francis hates them. Possibly the entire Local Group.”

“Except Tahani and Kamilah,” Eleanor says, and oh, no, she’s morose again.

Sahar pats her knee. “I’m sorry. Is it difficult? Tahani is always very nice to me, but I’ll admit that I don’t know her very well.” She looks a little regretful about it, but not guilty. It’s kind of novel, after all this time locked up in the mindfuck of the Al-Jamil estate, to talk to somebody who seems reasonably well-adjusted.

“It’s not…” Eleanor struggles with the words, unsure how to articulate the problem without telling Sahar stuff Tahani might not want her to know. Then she thinks, _Fuck it._ Tahani is great and she deserves her privacy, but some stuff _shouldn’t_ be private. “They’re abusive, you know? And Tahani doesn’t seem to… understand that. I want to help her, but I also don’t want to make her confront stuff she isn’t ready to deal with.” She smiles, a little ruefully. “Yeah, that part’s hard. But, you know.” She shrugs. “I love her, so.”

“I can tell she loves you too,” Sahar says. “It’s obvious, every time she looks at you. Like she can’t believe you’re real. And she’s always looking at you, whenever you’re in the room, no matter whether you’re with her or not. It’s sweet.”

Eleanor doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she asks, “What’s the Local Group?”

“Ah,” Sahar says, “that’s the galactic cluster where we live.”

Eleanor inquires further, and ends up learning about Sahar herself. She’s an observational astrophysicist, apparently, studies pulsars at the Jodrell Bank Observatory. Eleanor’s not entirely sure what all that means, but it sounds cool as shit, and she respects the fact that Sahar has a real job besides being wealthy.

She’s drunk enough to tell her so, which makes Sahar laugh and say, “Well, I have to support Bilal somehow.”

This leads her to explain that Bilal is a science fiction writer, working on a novel right now about a network of space elevators that spans the Milky Way, old wars and aliens and the nature of power. The look on Sahar’s face when she talks about him, fond and indulgent and gently affectionate, prods at the wound of Eleanor’s love, which is at this point old enough that it’s starting to heal over.

Eventually, some of Sahar’s friends come and drag her away, and Eleanor waves to her as she leaves. Then she waits for Tahani, trying not to pick at the scab in her chest.

 _It would be so easy to love me,_ Eleanor thinks, the swirling haze of alcohol having overridden her own determination not to wallow. _It would be so easy to just let it happen. I wish she would let herself trust me to take care of her. I wouldn’t let her down. I promise, Tahani, I wouldn’t let you down._

“Eleanor,” says Tahani’s voice, suddenly in front of her.

Eleanor looks up at her. “Tahani,” she says, hearing the way her voice cherishes the syllables, unable to stop it. “I missed you. Why did you go?”

“How much have you had to drink?” Tahani demands. “Have you been alone all this time, just getting plastered?”

“No,” answers Eleanor, petulant. “I talked to Sahar. She’s really cool.” She looks up at Tahani, her eyes feeling huge in her face, like they might pop loose from the surrounding bone. “She said you can’t believe I exist.”

“Right now, I’m all too aware,” Tahani says, a bit meanly. “We ought to go home, before you lose the ability to stand up properly.”

“That happened a couple drinks ago,” Eleanor says. “You’re so beautiful. You’re the most beautiful person in the world.” She thinks. “Except Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

Tahani looks away, a bitter twist to her lips. Eleanor reaches up to try to smooth her face out, and Tahani closes her eyes, lets it happen, breathes out. Eleanor tugs at her dress sleeves until she leans down, and then kisses her.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t react at all, like stone against Eleanor’s lips, so eventually Eleanor pulls back. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I wanted you to feel better, but you feel worse. Do you want to dance?”

“I don’t feel worse,” Tahani says dully. “And I don’t want to dance. I just want to leave.”

“Okay,” Eleanor says, even though she really wants to dance some more. “You have to do the thing, right? With—politeness? Rounding?”

Tahani nods.

“Tell Sahar I said goodbye,” Eleanor says, grabbing Tahani’s hand, desperate now for some sign that she still loves Eleanor, that what they have hasn’t shattered irreparably. “I’ll go get us a… guy. To take us back to the place where you live. A car man.”

“Alright,” Tahani says, and squeezes Eleanor’s hand. Eleanor hopes hopelessly that whatever she did, Tahani can find a way to forgive her for it.

The ride back is still awkward, but Tahani lets Eleanor hold her hand, at least. Moving has made her suddenly feel even drunker than she already was, and she can’t stop herself from biting one of Tahani’s fingers gently, and then just kind of licking it. “Delectable,” she declares, with drunken intensity.

“It’s time to sleep, darling,” Tahani says quietly, and reclaims her hand. She’s still sort of lackluster, like tarnished metal. She pulls Eleanor’s head into her lap anyway, though. Eleanor thinks dazedly that if Tahani had a dick this whole thing would have gotten sorted out _ages_ ago. “Just go to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Eleanor just might hold her to that. If she remembers any of this when she wakes up, that is. Sleep steals her next thought away.

 

 

 

_the most important Friday, as May blooms  
Tahani’s had enough_

In the end, it’s Tahani who snaps first. Eleanor had a whole speech planned out for the day before her plane leaves, typed out in her phone and everything, complete with unequivocal declarations of love and devotion and metaphors and a whole history of Eleanor’s love for her, but it’s so much bupkus now, because Tahani snaps first.

She drags Eleanor out of bed with surprising strength (she’s such a tangled web of emotional fault lines that Eleanor hasn’t ever really thought of her as a physical being, aside from the obvious) and deposits her in a heap of pillows and bedding, standing over her until her sleepy blinks of confusion turn into wide-awake blinks of confusion.

“So, I have no idea what’s going on,” Eleanor says, groping around at the comforter and blanching as her hangover rears its ugly head. “You feel like explaini—”

“I’m sick of all this drama!” Tahani yells. Eleanor blinks some more. “Are you in love with me or not?”

Eleanor is still sort of waking up and trying desperately not to vomit, which is the only reason she answers with, “What?” instead of, “Yes. Most ardently.” So much for her Jane Austen moment.

She realizes her error at once and opens her mouth to say something far less suave, like, “Yeah, of course, Jesus, yeah, I love you,” but apparently this last perceived rejection has well and truly extinguished Tahani’s patience. She paces back and forth, feral fury in her eyes.

“I’m at my wit’s end, Eleanor, my absolute wit’s end,” Tahani shouts. Eleanor winces at the volume. Tahani doesn’t seem to notice. “I have been understanding. I have been accomodating. I have been so goddamned patient that the Catholics probably ought to canonize me. But I’m done waiting! I’m done, Eleanor, do you hear me? Fed up! At the end of my rope! The last straw has finally broken my back! I’ve got to know. I can’t take any more of this back-and-forth, oh, does she love me? Does she not? Well, I love you, madly, passionately, so much I’m _sick_ with it half the time, and I’ve simply _got_ to know if you feel the same!”

Evidently she’s not curious enough to stop ranting, because she ignores Eleanor’s still-open mouth. “When I met you, I mean, I knew you were attracted to me, you were quite clear about that. But you were also quite clear about what you thought of people like me, and so I thought, I’ll let her take lead here. If she wants me, she’ll tell me. You’re always so direct. But then you didn’t, and you didn’t, and you still haven’t, and God, Eleanor, what are you waiting for? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something I need to do to prove to you that I want you? Do you just not want me? I mean, you’re attracted to me, I know you are, you _must_ be—”

“Tahani!” Eleanor yells, interrupting, because Tahani’s spiraling down into a frenzy about nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing that can’t be resolved if she would just let Eleanor talk.

Tahani stops and shoots her a poisonous glare. _“What?”_

Eleanor gets up and sits down on the mattress, looking up at Tahani with the gentlest eyes she can muster. “I’ve been trying to answer for ten minutes, babe.”

She deflates, looking like a Tahani-shaped balloon that’s begun to leak helium. “Oh.” Tahani looks down at her shoes. “What have you been trying to say?”

“Yes,” Eleanor says. “I love you. I’m _in_ love with you.” She smiles, rueful. “I was going to tell you on Sunday.”

The last bit of Tahani’s air streams back into the atmosphere. “Sunday?” she repeats. She walks over and sits down next to Eleanor, still looking bewildered more than anything else. It’ll hit her.

“Sunday,” Eleanor confirms. “I wanted to wait until after the wedding. Just in case. I had a whole speech written out and everything.”

“Can I—” Tahani starts. “Would you still—”

“Yeah,” Eleanor says. “Fair warning that there’s a lot of _Pride and Prejudice_ references. And I was gonna send it to Chidi to proofread tomorrow, so…”

“You were going to make Chidi proofread your love confession?”

Eleanor feels herself blushing. “I wanted it to be perfect,” she mumbles.

“Sorry! Sorry,” Tahani says quickly. “Read it to me? Please?” She smiles, happiness dawning in her eyes like a Phoenix sunrise. “I love Jane Austen.”

“Yeah,” Eleanor says, and stands up to go grab her phone off the nightstand. It seems like she should be standing for this—that’s how she’d imagined it, all this time, even before she made the definitive decision to fess up—so she stays on her feet and moves in front of Tahani.

“Tahani Al-Jamil,” she starts, because there’s nothing like a clear topic sentence, “I, Eleanor Shellstrop, am in love with you. I have actually been in love with you for a good deal of many—”

She stops and scratches her head. “Shit. This is why I wanted Chidi to proofread it for me.”

“Go on,” Tahani encourages. “It’s lovely.”

Eleanor takes a breath, laughs a little, and says, “Okay, fine. For you, babe, I’ll revise on the fly.” She shakes her head and raises the screen again. “I have actually been in love with you for about six months. Since the… night I first met you, if you want to know the exact time and locar—locam—place.” Eleanor shakes her head again—apparently Drunk Eleanor had worked on this outside the bounds of Sober Eleanor’s memory. “I fell in love with you at first sight, but I’ve stayed in love with you from— _for_ much longer than that. Getting to know all the parts of… all the… shit, this is incomprehensible.” She skims a little further down and rubs her neck, blushing as Tahani laughs, though it’s kind. “The more I’ve gotten to know you, the deeper and more hopelessly—God, this is badly written, I’m sorry—I have fallen in love with you, and been glad to do so. It’s been my greatest privilege, to get to loving—fuck. To get to love you.” She pauses, and then reads, “I hope you will allow me to tell you now about how ardently I love and admire you.”

She pauses. “It says, ‘Hopefully Tahani hasn’t punched me out at this point.’”

“Keep going.”

Eleanor plunges on. “I love your kindness and your gentleness,” she says. She looks Tahani in the eyes while she says this part, because this is the section she’d barely even had to write. She could talk about loving Tahani in a sensory deprivation chamber. It’s part of her. “I love how brave you are. I love your pride and your insecurity. I love your sincerity and your vulnerability and your shitty taste in television.”

Tahani starts to tear up. It’s finally hitting her. “I love the way you argue. The way you correct me when I try to talk about your world, even when I’m right. The way you haven’t let that divide come between us, when you could have, easy.”

She’s crying now too, a little bit, six months of repressed emotion all bubbling out of her at once. “You’re amazing, Tahani. You’re brilliant and tender and you care so much I don’t know how you bear it. You’re the best person I know, including Janet. My very favorite person, including Chidi. Being around you, talking to you, thinking about you, is the best part of my day. I hope I bring you the same joy. I _want_ to bring you the same joy.” She pauses. “There’s a bit here about doing that in whatever form you’re willing to accept, but I think you made that pretty clear earlier.”

Tahani laughs through her tears. Eleanor sets her phone aside and walks over to her, cradling her face in her hands. “There’s also a lot more about how hot you are, but I can send it to you later if you’re determined to humiliate me.”

Tahani nods, her skin brushing against Eleanor’s hands, and looks up at her with huge teary beautiful loving eyes. “I am.”

“Incorrigible brat,” Eleanor says, but it just sounds like a term of endearment. “So, in conclusion: I don’t want to spend any more nights wishing I could wake up next to you in the morning. It would be the greatest gift you could ever give me to accept my love, and give me your own in turn.” She strokes her thumb along Tahani’s cheekbone, wiping dry the tear-gummed skin there. “What do you say, hot stuff? You want to give this thing a try?”

“‘Till this moment, I never knew myself,’” Tahani whispers. She turns her head until her lips are against Eleanor’s hand, and kisses it with all the pressure of a whisper. Eleanor shudders. Tahani tilts her cheek back into Eleanor’s hand and looks up at her with huge, joyful eyes. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I do. I want to. I want _you._ Yes. Yes. _Yes.”_

And she surges up and wraps her arms around Eleanor and kisses her. They kiss and kiss for so long that Eleanor’s perception of the world narrows to the burn of Tahani’s lips against hers, the wet heat of her mouth, her hands gripping her hips.

Eleanor pulls away, a little startled to find that they’re laid out on the bed. “I really want to… is it horribly cheesy to say that I want to make love to you?”

“If you’re cheesy, I’m fondue,” Tahani says, her tone doting, and, well, that’s an objectively terrible simile but they’re love-stupid enough right now that Eleanor lets it go without mockery. “I want that, too.”

They both pause and then say at the same time, “But not—”

Eleanor finishes the sentence, though she has to fight through giggles to do so. “—in your parents’ house!”

Tahani laughs, wild with joy. “That’s alright, my love,” she says. “We have all the time in the world.”

Eleanor doubts that a more beautiful truth has ever passed through the lips of a more beautiful person. “Yeah,” she breathes, moonstruck by the possibility of it all. “All the time in the world.”

 

 

 

_Saturday & Sunday, in blue-eyed May  
Eleanor and Tahani, in finality_

Neither of them pays the wedding nor the walima more than the barest hint of attention. They’re too wrapped up in each other. Eleanor supposes this is what people mean when they talk about the _honeymoon phase._ Eleanor’s never really experienced it; before Chidi, all her relationships had been either purely sexual or too bogged down by Eleanor’s issues and her harshness to get there. She hadn’t ever really just _liked_ someone, too afraid of trust to allow it of herself. All of those people had mostly stayed with her because they were wildly attracted to her. Maybe some of them had thought that she could be saved, too, and that they would be the ones to do it.

And with Chidi, there had never been any pure affection like she shares with Tahani. They’d been like an old married couple from day one, knew each other in such a raw, instinctive way that none of the sappiness had ever come. It had been beautiful, in its own way, but they had skipped the phase of spontaneous gift-giving and silly affection. Maybe it was because they had been too busy needing each other, fixing each other in a way nobody before had managed to achieve. She’d been afraid to trust, and at first afraid of the fact that she _did_ trust Chidi, immediately, unquestionably, with a depth of surety that her own hang-ups couldn’t prevent. And Chidi had been afraid, not of love, but of being changed. Of the absoluteness of his own mind and body’s decision to let Eleanor change him, without reservation or second-guessing. That first year between them had been something more than love, but also something less.

But with Tahani—they _want_ to care about other, to dote on each other, to experience being hopelessly in love. Eleanor finally understands why people spend their whole lives searching for this, or at least part of it. She’s always been fulfilled enough by her friendships, seen sex as something almost separate from love, but with Tahani—it’s like flying, wingless and planeless and unsupported, into a warm, cloudless sky.

She sends everybody a snap of them kissing the morning of the wedding, captioned _guess what happened ;)._ It’s barely three minutes before Chidi calls.

Tahani waves her hand indulgently, but Eleanor doesn’t leave. She bumbles around for her phone, curls up under Tahani’s arm, and answers.

“What the fuck!” Simone’s screeching voice sounds. Tahani giggles. “You finally told her?”

“Congratulations!” Chidi yells.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eleanor says fondly. “I know, we’re cute as hell.”

There are more questions and congratulations, and Eleanor mostly ignores them in favor of gazing into Tahani’s eyes. They end up kissing while everybody yells back and forth, until vaguely she hears Simone say, “They’re probably making out. Hopeless,” and then, “Have fun, you crazy kids!”

Eventually they extricate themselves so they can get gussied up for the wedding. Luckily, it’s on the grounds, so they stay together in Tahani’s room until the last second, making out and groping each other like teenagers.

It all blends together, the wedding and the walima, dancing and feasting and an air of love and joy so thick in the air Jason could probably set it on fire. It’s lovely, the bliss on Sahar and Bilal’s faces, and Eleanor resolves to keep in touch with her. Because she likes her, and because Tahani deserves to remember—and _ought_ to remember—that she has more family than just Manisha and Waqas, family that’s good and kind and treats her like more than just another accomplishment.

When they’re dancing at the wedding, Tahani whispers in her ear, “I want to come back with you to Phoenix. And I want to leave tomorrow, after the walima.” She pulls back, a mostly-hopeful, slightly nervous look in her eyes.

Eleanor vows to herself to keep at this thing until Tahani never feels unsure about her again. She gets up on her toes and wraps her arms around Tahani’s neck and kisses her soundly. “Thank God,” she says. “I was dreading being separated from you so soon after we finally got our acts together.”

Tahani beams, brilliant, and kisses Eleanor again. She’s the whole world.

After the walima, they have to go back to the house to get their stuff. There’s something strange in being back here for the last time, somehow both easier and more difficult than the last week and a half combined. They’re finally leaving, finally escaping, their love for each other coming with them. But the act of setting foot in the Manor, the physicality of the place, takes effort, because they _are_ finally escaping, and home is so close and tangible now that Eleanor can practically feel her lips cracking in the parched desert air.

It’s bittersweet, just a little, because as horrible and haunted as the estate is, it’s also where Eleanor and Tahani finally decided to really work at loving one another. It’s where Tahani, after so many years, let go of the dream of her parents’ love. It’s where they learned that they could go through terrible hardship and emerge united. For that, Eleanor thinks she’ll never be able to truly hate this place. How could she, when it gave her everything?

“We should say goodbye to Kamilah,” Eleanor says, because despite her initial dislike, she’s grown to like Tahani’s sister. She’s bitchy and rude and a little crazy, but Eleanor can’t help but respond to her hostile vulnerability. She responds to her, in much the same way she responded initially to Tahani—she wants to help her. Recognizes, in Kamilah, something like the person she used to be. (It’s an odd person, the person she’s become, but Eleanor wouldn’t want to be anyone else.)

Tahani strokes her thumb over the webbing of Eleanor’s fingers. “I spoke with her last night,” she says, and Eleanor wants to ask about what she said, but there’ll be time for that later. “But you should go ahead. I think it would mean a lot to her.”

Eleanor cocks her head. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Tahani says, so Eleanor heads off, getting a ubiquitous butler to tell her where Kamilah’s room is.

She knocks on the closed door, and after a moment Kamilah says, “Enter.”

Eleanor heads in, closing the door behind her, and then stands leaned against the wall by the door. The room is big, of course, but unexpectedly messy. There’s a huge drafting table off to the left, scattered and splattered with paints and papers and canvases. On the right, an antique-looking vanity has been thoroughly destroyed by a mess of makeup and face paint and hair supplies, some laying open and scattered. Bookshelves, waist-high, line most of the remaining walls. Eleanor looks at the one nearest to her, and the titles are all things like _James Turrell: Geometry of Light_ or _Chromophobia_ or _The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh._

The walls are painted a dark, soothing purple-blue, but it’s barely visible under the crowding of signed posters with scrawling writing saying things like, _Thank you so much, Kamilah!_ or _you’re an inspiration, kami xoxo_ and fanmail and odd, unsettling nonrepresentational paintings and framed vinyl records and photos of Kamilah with all kinds of different people. Eleanor feels, very suddenly, as though she’s intruded on something intensely private. It occurs to her that she doesn’t really know anything about Kamilah’s life outside of her relationship with Tahani—she’s never considered that it might be, in its own way, full. Though the intensity of all these reminders make her suspect that it isn’t fulfilling, not really, even if she seems to have quite a lot of friends.

Kamilah’s sitting on the edge of her huge, littered bed, atop unmade black and blue sheets. She looks very tired. “Hello, Eleanor,” she says.

“Hey, Kamilah,” Eleanor says. There’s a short silence, and then she says, “We’re leaving in a little under an hour.”

“I heard,” Kamilah says atonally. “You must be glad to finally be escaping this place.”

“I am,” Eleanor answers honestly. “But I…”

She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. It feels almost brutally horrible, leaving Kamilah alone with her parents. She almost can’t bear the thought of abandoning her to them. She thinks, a little wryly, that her heart seems to have adopted Kamilah without her permission.

“Will you come with us?” she finishes finally, unable to stop herself. She’s not sure that she _likes_ Kamilah, exactly, but she thinks she might love her. Not the way she loves Chidi and Jason and Janet and Michael and Simone, not the way she loves Tahani, but maybe the way she still loves Donna and Doug Shellstrop, even though she’s tried not to. With a kind of familial helplessness, a responsibility, bone-marrow deep, to protect her. She doesn’t want Kamilah to come with them, in the sense that she doesn’t want to be _around_ Kamilah, but she does want her to come with them, in the sense that she wants to prevent her from experiencing any more pain.

Kamilah smiles, a bitter ugly smile that stabs at Eleanor’s heart. “I don’t think Tahani would appreciate you making that offer.”

“I don’t care,” Eleanor says. “I love her, but I…” She takes a breath, steadying herself. “I care about you, too,” she says. “I know you probably don’t want me to, but, well, tough shit.” She looks at Kamilah, who still hasn’t, at any point, looked at her. “I care about what happens to you, Kamilah. Not because of your fame or your status or your money or even because Tahani loves you.” She takes another breath. “I wouldn’t condemn my worst enemy to this place. Why would I let Tahani decide to leave you here if you want to go?”

Kamilah still isn’t looking at her. She doesn’t say anything, just sits there, still as a statue. Eleanor thinks maybe she should be embarrassed about everything she’s said, but she isn’t. In becoming this odd self, she’s learned to love, but she didn’t learn what most people maybe did, when they grew up loving: how to set limits on that capacity. She loves entirely, and fiercely, and with brutal, weaponized intensity. Maybe that’s too much for Kamilah to bear, but Eleanor can’t help it, any more than she can help yearning for the burn of desert sand between her toes.

She walks over to the bed cautiously, hesitant to touch Kamilah, but unwilling to leave her in this obvious state of upset. “Kamilah?”

Kamilah finally makes a noise, and that noise is a sob, almost a wail. She wraps her arms around Eleanor’s waist, buries her head in her stomach, and Eleanor gets down on her knees so she can hug her properly. She wonders how long it’s been since Kamilah’s been held. From her odd, desperate grasp, a dark, mournful part of Eleanor suspects that the answer is _never._

She pats her back and holds Kamilah for a few more minutes, and then finally says, “I’ve gotta catch that plane. You come anytime you want, okay? I’ll deal with Tahani, if it comes to that.” She pulls away, stands, and places an almost motherly kiss to the top of Kamilah’s head. “Take care, Kamilah.”

Kamilah nods and looks away, hugging herself now. When Eleanor’s about to close the door behind her, she says, “Eleanor?”

Eleanor doesn’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” Kamilah says softly. Eleanor nods once without looking back, and then leaves.

When she gets back to Tahani’s room, she wraps her arms around her from the back, pressing a soft kiss to her right shoulder blade. “Hey, beautiful,” she says.

“Hello, my love,” Tahani says, and twists around to kiss her. Eleanor feels like she’s made out of sunlight. When she pulls back, they’re still holding each other loosely.

“I love you, Tahani,” Eleanor says, “and I’m grateful that you showed me this part of yourself. But I am _never_ coming back here again.”

Tahani’s quiet for a long moment, and then she says, head down, “I don’t think I want to either.”

Eleanor starts a little, then smiles. “Good,” she says. “That’s really good.” She kisses Tahani again, then rests her head on her chest for just a moment, soaking up Tahani’s warmth. She’s like a portable sun, and all her rays are for Eleanor. It still takes her breath away. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They board the plane quietly, tiredly, the past fortnight’s events catching up with them in a rush of sudden exhaustion. They’re in first class, which is _awesome,_ and Eleanor claims a window seat and stretches out like a _fucking king._ After a moment she turns to Tahani and says, hesitantly, “Do you regret it?”

Tahani tilts her head, confused.

“Any of it, really, but mostly… that you might never get to to home,” Eleanor explains, a pang of guilt prodding at her gut. She knows it’s probably be for the best if Tahani never sees her parents again, never goes back to that house, but still. There’s nothing quite like going back to the room you grew up in in the house you grew up in, knowing every nook and cranny of a place, or so Eleanor assumes. It’s not like she’d know.

“They’ll die eventually,” Tahani says flippantly. Eleanor raises a skeptical eyebrow, and Tahani loses a bit of her defiance. “And… well…” She pauses, then blurts, “If you’re not opposed to the idea, I’d rather like for us to build a home together.”

Well, _Jesus._ If that isn’t the single most romantic thing anyone has ever said to Eleanor in her _life._ She doesn’t know how to live up to it, so she kisses Tahani, long and soft and tender, and then she says, “No. I’m definitely not opposed.” She presses a fleeting kiss to the underside of Tahani’s jaw. “Kind of hard to imagine anywhere being home without you there, if we’re being honest.”

Tahani sighs and leans forward and kisses her the same way, too tired for passion but too emphatic to be casual. Her mouth tastes like honeysuckle.

They gaze at each other for another long moment, and then Tahani makes herself comfortable, tucking her head in between Eleanor’s shoulder and her chin, and Eleanor turns her gaze to the window to watch the world shrink down to Barbie Dreamhouses, to carefully-constructed toy models, to the dusty innards of snow globes.

Eleanor’s looking forward to going home. She always does, when she’s away, not that she’s ever away very long or very often. Chidi had brought her with him to Australia, a few times, back when they were dating, introduced her to Uzo and Ellen and Henry (whose candy-red queer cowboy boots Eleanor had genuinely adored. They still exchange Boot Bro snaps). Another time, after they’d broken up but before Chidi had met Simone, he’d brought her along with him to Stockholm to accept an award. Eleanor had made fun of their stupid Nordic accents with such incisive cruelty that she’d made three grown men cry, and Chidi had banned her (unofficially, most likely, though Eleanor’s never been able to find out for sure) from Northern Europe altogether. Another time, Michael had brought her with him to Seattle, shown her the city and every last thing that was evil about it, which had been less of a vacation and more of a depressingly inescapable lecture (not that she’ll ever tell Michael that). And once Janet had brought Eleanor along with them to L.A. to be a part of a Tournament of Champs audience, which had been fun, even if L.A. is objectively the ugliest city in every possible universe.

All those times, she’d had fun (except Seattle, _God,_ that hadn’t even been fun for _Michael),_ but she’d thought the whole time about home. For better or for worse, she loves Phoenix; the blood-curdling dry heat, the science-fiction dust storms, the release of a good battle in the eternal freeway wars, the gentle hug of low mountains on all sides. The _sunsets,_ like God’s fucking around with his paint pallet just for her. She always wants, a little bit, to be in Phoenix. Maybe that makes her Arizona trash—but as has become starkly evident, these past two weeks, there are far worse things to be.

Eleanor holds Tahani’s hand in hers, reveling in the softness of it. Tahani’s already out like a light on her shoulder, hair all fuzzed up, and there’s something so wonderful and simple about it, how easy it’s been for them to transform an oddly intense friendship into a comfortably warm partnership. A flood of relief washes over her as London’s too-tall, too-unpredictable, obscenely jam-packed buildings retreat into the distance, until they’re nothing more than a streak of grey bisected by the brownish-green Thames. Yeah, Eleanor’s glad to be going home. She’ll never be able to be anything but fond of London, not after everything it’s done for her, but home is home is home, and Eleanor’s missed Phoenix (and the family she left there) with a fierce longing that would almost surprise her, if she hadn’t felt it enough times before to recognize the sensation.

But this time, it’s different. This time, she’ll have the best of all possible homecomings.

This time, she’s got a prize.

 

 

 

_it doesn’t matter  
they’re all in this together, after all_

“Move the _fuck_ out of the way, _aapi!”_ Kamilah screeches. “Bortles is heading for the end zone and if I miss his first TD of the season I will _skin you aliv—”_

She cuts herself off with a scream as Tahani ducks away from the TV, though it’s soon indistinguishable from Jason’s roars of triumph and Janet’s keening pleasure. Kamilah kisses Jason full on the lips, then Janet too, and she dances around the room and Janet’s flapping their teal arms in joy and Jason’s jumping up and down on the sofa trying to touch the ceiling, and then Kamilah jumps up next to him on the couch and gives him a boost.

When his fingers brush the popcorn-plastered upper boundary of their universe, he stops shouting and whispers, reverently, _“Bortles.”_ The look on his face is pure, sheer awe, like he’s touching the hand of God themself.

Eleanor doesn’t get it. What’s the appeal of a watching bunch of guys stand around on astroturf, waiting for the chance to beat each other to death over a ball?

“We should have gone to the bar with Chidi and Simone,” Tahani mutters. “I can’t hear myself think amongst all this ruckus.”

Eleanor kisses her, because she wants to. “Come on,” she says. “It’s nice, seeing Jason like this, isn’t it? He’s been really down ever since that stray cat ate Sharpay.” What in hellfire possessed Jason to name a _tarantula_ that, Eleanor’s probably better off not knowing.

“It is nice,” Tahani says sullenly.

Eleanor kisses her again, this time in an attempt to salve Tahani’s injured pride. She’d taken a while to bring Kamilah back to East High—months—and Eleanor thinks she still regrets agreeing at all, a little, because once Jason had introduced Kamilah to American football (“rugby for cowards,” Tahani calls it, like _that’s_ going to make her Jason’s favorite Al-Jamil), it had all been over. And then when Kamilah had introduced Jason to Blake Bortles it had been not just over but so obviously a lost cause from the start that Eleanor had wondered why Tahani had even bothered to begin with. “It’s nice seeing her loosen up too,” Eleanor says. “Even if it’s the byproduct of football-induced homicidal rage.”

Tahani doesn’t say anything in response, but she kisses Eleanor’s head in something like apology. Things between her and Kamilah are about a hundred times better than they were when Eleanor first met her, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy now. There’s a whole vast desert of distance between enemies and friends, and Tahani and Kamilah both seem determined to explore every last inch of that desolate expanse before giving in and trying to like one another.

Sometimes the sorrow for who Tahani could have been if she’d known love before she was grown jolts Eleanor awake in the middle of the night, panting and breathless. But then Tahani’s soothing murmurs break through the vacuum of her sorrow and Eleanor remembers that if that had happened she might never have met Tahani at all, and, well, maybe she’s entitled to hold onto a few shards of her old selfishness.

“I think he and Janet are courting Kamilah,” Tahani says. Watching them, the way Jason vies for her attention, the way Janet stays within a certain radius of the both of them, the tender look in the gaze they share with each other and then spread around the room to encompass Kamilah, Eleanor thinks, _Shit, yeah, maybe they are._

“Would that be so bad?” she says carefully. “They certainly have enough love to share it with her. And…”

And they’re the kindest people any of them have ever met or ever will meet. And Kamilah’s still the same kind of brittle that Tahani had been, when Eleanor met her for the first time. And Tahani had needed Eleanor, at first, to sand her down to a smoothness where she could love herself, first and foremost. And Eleanor’s tenacity and her certainty that Tahani deserved to be loved were a huge part of what made that process possible. If anybody can be an Eleanor for Kamilah, it’s Janet and Jason. Maybe she needs the both of them.

 _High-maintenance, as usual,_ Eleanor thinks, and doesn’t even bother to suppress the appendant fondness.

“Yeah,” Tahani says. Eleanor pinches her cheek.

Eleanor knows that Tahani knows that if Eleanor hadn’t found Chidi first, she wouldn’t have been able to help her like she had, or love her like she does, because she wouldn’t have been able to push past her initial thought of _spoiled rich brat,_ wouldn’t have tried to know her instead of just fucking her. Wouldn’t have everything she has now, which is a whole hell of a lot, and be the person she is now, which is an Eleanor worth being. (An Eleanor worth Tahani.)

But she’s never existed in a state of Eleanorness which needed Tahani to be whole, not like Tahani had needed her, those first few months. She’d needed Chidi; needs him still, really, probably always will. Tahani’s always known that about her, about them, that she and Chidi have something perpendicular to what Jason and Janet have. They found each other when they were both lost, patched each other up with unsteady hands and experimental cuts and all the wrong instruments, and their reckless determination made all those tools which shouldn’t have fit work anyway.

She loves Tahani like she loves waterfalls and rainbows and days where the sun shines so brightly the prospect of stepping outside without sunglasses seems like an invitation of disaster. But she doesn’t love her like she’ll die without it, because she wouldn’t. She would be devastated, and she would probably lie in bed for three weeks watching sad romance movies and eating variety chocolates Elle Woods-style, but she would get over it, or at least learn to live with the loss, and find love again somewhere new. That’s a good thing, but it’s scary, too. She thinks that maybe she needs to work on finding the balance between being selfless and being self-sacrificial, because it could have been the difference between being brave enough to have Tahani and being too careful to even try. She’s glad Tahani took the leap, because in retrospect she can see how she might have come up with another excuse to put it off, and then continued to invent rationalizations until someone else inevitably fell in love with Tahani and wasn’t too tangled up in their own neuroses to tell her so.

In short: she’s getting better every day at knowing how to know how to be alive. She hopes she’ll never stop, because she’s pretty sure it’s why they’re here on this weird little messy beautiful oblate spheroid hunk of accreted matter they’ve decided to call Earth. Human beings, that is.

Eleanor had a lot of days like this before she met Tahani, perfect days. It would be reductionist to pretend she hadn’t. The perfect days that happen now are better perfect days because Tahani’s here, of course, but they were still perfect before. Maybe the days that happen now are just even more perfect than perfect. 104% perfect. Like Stone Cold Steve Austin’s beautiful, shining, hairless muscles.

But she knows that Tahani’s still a little jealous of her and Chidi, even though she knows they don’t want sex from each other anymore, even though Eleanor has made any number of promises to prioritize Tahani over Chidi to appease Tahani’s unpredictable, fickle jealousy, even though their friendship doesn’t threaten her, in much the same way that Eleanor having skin doesn’t threaten her. Eleanor’s love for Chidi is just a part of her existence. Well, what’s about to happen will probably ease her mind.

Eleanor stands, tugging Tahani up with her. “We’re heading over to the Neighborhood!” she hollers. “Come meet us there when the game is done!”

“Okay!” Janet chirps. Kamilah winks at her, and Eleanor grins, and Tahani sighs her relief, and they head out.

She leaves Tahani with Simone and Uzo and Ellen when they arrive, snagging Chidi and dragging him back to Michael’s plain little back room. He looks like a very badly made advertisement for liquor against the shelves of vacuum-sealed limes and lemons and uniform vodka bottles.

“Eleanor,” Chidi whines, sitting down on top of Michael’s desk and dragging his hands over his pitiful-looking face. “Do you see my shirt? How am I supposed to propose to Simone when I look like I just got done mowing the lawn? _Eleanor._ You have to help me.”

She does see his shirt, although it doesn’t say _yard work_ so much as it screams, _This 90-year-old asthmatic is about to have his third heart attack!_ Luckily for Chidi, she’d come prepared. Eleanor pulls from her purse a stiff-collared pink button-up shirt, a pack of makeup wipes, Chidi’s sandalwood cologne, a black suit jacket, a bow tie, and a single de-thorned red rose. “I couldn’t find the ring,” she says, mercilessly flinging Chidi’s possessions at his unprotected head. “You have it?”

Chidi shoves a hand in his pocket and grabs at something. Simone’s engagement ring, presumably. “I’ve been carrying it around for three weeks,” he admits, with no shame whatsoever. He’s too full of heady, elated anticipation.

He strips off his shirt in a single smooth movement, tearing open the wipes so he can replace the scent of sweat with that of sandalwood. Eleanor jabs his side. He doesn’t flinch. “Keeping jacked, I see.”

“Just in case you ever decide to take me back,” Chidi jokes. “Simone’s been bugging me to put a little more meat on my bones. I think she wants to bake me into a pie.”

Eleanor grins at him stupidly. She can’t bring herself to care about how goofy she must look. “I’m so happy for you guys.”

Chidi grins back, like a complete and total idiot. He’s still sort of the love of Eleanor’s life, but all things considered she’s glad he’s not _every_ love of her life. There’s such a thing as being too much to a person. It’s good, that they found a balance. They nurture each other, but they don’t feed off of one another. And Tahani is so perfect for her, and Simone is so perfect for him, and Eleanor’s gonna give them six months to the day before she starts nagging them about making perfect little nieces or nephews or agender friends’-children (Jason has suggested the word _nibling,_ but Janet says it sounds like a term used to refer to the spare fat from a chicken, and Eleanor tends to agree) for her to spoil rotten.

Chidi’s been talking pretty much nonstop about the proposal for the last three and a half months. It took him two weeks of back and forth between himself and Eleanor before he was sure he’d decided, and then another month to pick out the perfect ring. (It’s a simple platinum band, entirely unadorned except for an engraving inside, which reads: C8H11NO2. Dopamine. Executive function and healthily produced pleasure. The sappy loser.)

Then Chidi had spent another month and a half planning the proposal, with select help. Eleanor and Michael and Kamilah and Uzo, basically. Eleanor and Uzo had handled moral support—it was _Chidi,_ he needed the both of them—and Kamilah had helped Chidi write his speech and Michael with planning the mini-reception. It’s not that Chidi hadn’t wanted everyone else to know, but Tahani and Jason can’t keep secrets to save their lives, and Janet wouldn’t have been _willing_ (or able, probably, given how much he translates for them) to keep one from Jason.

Simone probably knows this is coming, though she almost certainly doesn’t know it’s _today._ She’s been present for all of Eleanor’s incessant nagging, and about eight months back had begun to drop rather unsubtle hints herself. E.g., she emailed Chidi her ring specifications and her ideal wedding color scheme and a top ten best honeymoon destinations list. (The image of Chidi at the beach, bogged down by a soaking wet turtleneck, still makes Eleanor laugh.) Simone’s actions constitute not so much a hint as they do a kick in the ass, but hey, who’s keeping score?

(Eleanor is.)

And now they’re down to the wire. Uzo and Ellen flew in from Australia a couple days ago, Michael’s ready to clear out the bar, Chidi’s newly sweat-wicked and has the ring, and when the Jaguars finally lose to whoever it is they’re up against, it’ll be time.

Chidi pulls on the shirt and tie and jacket and immediately starts sweating again.

“You wanna stay in here until the football nuts arrive?” Eleanor suggests kindly. Chidi breathes out and nods.

“It’s not that I’m not sure,” he says anxiously. “I’m very sure. I’d marry Simone right now. But I guess I just… I want everything to go perfectly. For her. You know?”

Eleanor pats his arm. “That’s very sweet,” she says. “And very dumb. You’re proposing, Chidi. That means Simone’s gonna remember this day as being perfect no matter how Jason manages to ruin things. You literally can’t fuck this one up.”

Chidi grins, looking a little relieved. “What would I do without you?”

“Be living alone in a cave, probably.”

Chidi scowls. “And what would you do without me?”

Eleanor smiles at him, all teeth. “I’d track down your cave, of course.”

After another forty minutes, the despondent Jaguars troupe troops into the room. “Do they ever win, Jason?” Kamilah laments.

Janet, true to form, interrupts, though they do so with their hands and not their vocal chords. They’re not nonverbal today, but Kamilah knows ASL, and Eleanor thinks it’s still easier for Janet to sign sometimes, even if they don’t _need_ to. Kamilah seems to get this intuitively, which is probably one of the reasons (aside from the whole Blake Bortles thing) that Jason and Janet liked her so quickly and have continued to like her so _much._ It’s nice, if weird. But Eleanor—who is at present an enthusiastic attendee of her ex-boyfriend/soulmate’s proposal (that she helped to orchestrate) to a woman that Eleanor set him up with in the first place—is not exactly in a position to judge.

Kamilah moans in response to whatever number Janet cited. Eleanor’s ASL is still mostly limited to the alphabet, stock greeting phrases, and Janet’s signs for everybody’s names. _“Ever?_ I really am a sucker for lost causes.”

As all of this is going on, Michael’s clearing out the bar and Uzo and Ellen are finding the best vantage points at which to film both Simone and Chidi and Chidi’s mouthing his speech to himself like he’s going to somehow forget the eight sentences that he’s rehearsed, literally, like seven hundred and forty-nine times. Eleanor guesses this makes it an even seven fifty.

“What’s going on?” Simone demands. “Michael, why are you closing the bar at ten p.m. on a Saturday?”

Chidi gets down on one knee. Jason and Tahani both gasp. Janet flaps their hands excitedly. Eleanor knows she must be beaming. “Back here, babe,” Chidi says.

Simone turns, her eyes going extraordinarily wide when turns and sees Chidi kneeling before her. “Is this—?”

“I was like a wildfire when I met you,” Chidi begins, and aw _fuck,_ Eleanor’s definitely gonna cry. “I didn’t know how to stop setting everything around me ablaze. But you were a river, steady and rapid and brilliant. You don’t just make me a better man, you make everyone and everything around you better. I’d be honored if you’d allow me to spend the rest of my life attempting to keep up with your current of joy and vitality. And bringing you fire, when you need it.”

His voice has stayed steady and strong and sure the whole time, and Eleanor wonders if that’s why Simone’s crying, even more than because of his beautiful words. Eleanor knows it’s the reason she’d started to sniffle right away, and not during the grand finale. She’s like a proud mama goose watching her gosling bound out of its nest, headfirst, and soar up to the clouds.

“Simone Briar Garnett,” Chidi says, still rock-solid, his love for Simone lighting up the whole room, “I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

Simone covers her mouth with both hands, as if in prayer, and nods. “Yes,” she says after a moment, her voice thick. “Yes, Chidi, you beautiful idiot, of course I’ll marry you.” She pulls Chidi up and kisses him, then slips the perfectly fitted band onto her left-hand ring finger.

Tahani bursts into tears. Eleanor rubs soothing circles onto her back and fingers her own engagement ring, the one Tahani had given her during the whole fiasco at Sahar and Bilal’s wedding. They got it resized, a while back, and she wears it on her right index finger nowadays. (Eleanor has never told anyone this, not even Chidi or Tahani, but the first time she’d known that she and Tahani were going to last was when she realized that Tahani had started wearing flats so that it would be easier for Eleanor to kiss her. It seems kind of… vapid, maybe? But it’s still true.)

“Is this why we couldn’t go back to J-ville for the game?” Jason whines, undeterred by the sanctity of the occasion. “You couldn’t have proposed in two days?” Kamilah punches his arm, ignoring his curses.

“Sorry,” Chidi calls over Simone’s shoulder, not even bothering to try and sound like he means it. “I asked if we could reschedule the day we met, but apparently calendars just work like that?”

“Thanks for trying,” Jason says, which, apparently that settles that.

They dance and sing and drink and make merry, and Eleanor thinks that nothing in the world has ever been beautiful quite like they are. Her friends, her family, the Not-Bobcats of Not-East High. The six (fine, Kamilah, the seven) loves of her life. It’s maybe a cheesy goofball after-school special kind of a thought to think, but as long as they’re around, she’s pretty sure she can conquer any and all manner of haberdashery that life throws at her, no matter how huge or impossible or terrifying it might seem at first glance. Jason and Simone can confuse it to tears; Tahani and Janet can make it feel stupid and worthless; Michael and Chidi can bring it to such unfound heights of pessimism that it leaves the whole incident a dedicated nihilist.

And Kamilah and Eleanor? Well, they can fucking _annex_ it.

She passes Ellen and Simone admiring the ring, Michael and Jason listening to Uzo and Chidi swap childhood memories, Janet and Kamilah talking about color theory in such detail that Eleanor would probably need three years of college to even begin to follow them. And, at last, she finds Tahani.

She’s stretched out lengthwise, parallel to the table in the booth where they met, feet dangling out past the edge of the booth cushion, her back leaned against the wall. She looks like a fucking _snack._ Eleanor gets up and sits cross-legged on the table, takes Tahani’s hand, and asks, “Have I told you that I love you today?”

Tahani hums. “I could stand to hear it again.”

“I love you,” Eleanor says. “Still love me?”

“No, I started hating you ten minutes ago,” Tahani drawls. Eleanor kisses her right on her exposed teeth.

Tahani pulls away from her and spits into a paper napkin. “Eleanor! That’s just _disgusting!”_

“You definitely still love me,” Eleanor decides. In truth it’s kind of wonderful to see Tahani like this, confident enough to mock her and to poke fun at what once had been a very fragile thing. Part of it is just the test of time—they’ve made it out whole after screaming fights and Tahani’s piquant fits of baseless jealousy and Eleanor’s resentment of basically all of Tahani’s friends and acquaintances. They’ve stayed in contact and in love during Tahani’s long philanthropy trips and Eleanor’s occasional depressive withdrawals and Tahani’s anger that during her Eleanisodes (as Jason’s dubbed them), the only company she can really bear is Chidi’s. They’ve made it through Waqas and Manisha Al-Jamil and Donna Shellstrop begging Tahani for money and the month that Kamilah was institutionalized and they were barely able to exchange ten words a day across the expanse of the Atlantic.

But it’s not just all that giving Tahani her ease, though it’s definitely a huge fucking factor. With that final rejection of her parents’ hypothetical approval—and eventually of them altogether—came Tahani’s hostile takeover of her own body. She’s finally got stewardship over what she deserves. And fortunately for them both, Eleanor is all too happy to help her see that the answer is, quite simply, _everything._

Tahani owns her own opinions now, and she’s beginning to love her flaws with the same fierceness that she once used to deny their existence. It’s an amazing process to witness, like metamorphosis, this becoming of Tahani’s. She’s so fucking grateful she got to help catalyze it. When Tahani finds and excises the last crusty bit of cocoon, Eleanor thinks she’ll probably be the most breathtakingly beautiful butterfly to have ever existed.

“I think we should take a trip together,” Tahani says suddenly, squeezing Eleanor’s hand to get her attention. “What do you think, love? Paris?”

“Why not Rome?” Eleanor posits airily, and moves her hand around vaguely in front of her. “Or Reykjavik, or Madrid? And what of clear-seen Ithaka?” (Chidi’s been reading _The Odyssey_ to her lately, to prep for the proposal. And Eleanor’s always feeling a little bit poetic, nowadays.)

“Oh, but what about Istanbul?” Tahani suggests hopefully, ignoring Eleanor’s teasing. “They have so many wonderful museums.”

Eleanor loves her so much. “I love you so much,” she says. “You’re adorable.”

She leans forward, giving Tahani time to close her lips before she brushes them against her own. “I’d go anywhere in the world,” she says, “with you by my side. You’re all I ever want to look at anyway.”

Tahani tugs at her earlobe, irritated and fond in equal measure. “Help me choose, dear. I want you to want to go there too.”

Eleanor shrugs. “Paris sounds nice,” she admits. “But no matter where you want to go, my answer is gonna be yes.”

She kisses Tahani again, the exact kiss she’d imagined back when they were still unsure of one another, the kiss they’ve shared a thousand times in between then and now. Punctuation. A sure thing. Tahani curves up into her, and maybe she’s a comma, maybe what she’s punctuating is their continuance. Eleanor can’t think of anything she’d choose over seeing what comes after this, over crafting their story of their lives, together, scribbling down every question mark and semicolon and silly perfunctory parenthetical. She doesn’t know what will happen to them, what demons they’ll face, what battles they’ll fight, what beauties will sprout from their love and bloom in the untamed wilderness of Eleanor’s heart. But she’s positive it’ll all be beautiful and hilarious and tragic and magnificent and overflowing with every good/bad/medium thing that fills up the pages of a life.

(Two lives, in point of fact.)

Eleanor beams at her, so full of love she can hardly stand it, and Tahani beams back, and it’s like flying. “It’s always going to be yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> confession: I thought the hsm mascot was the Bobcats (not the Wildcats) until I was already like halfway through writing this, and by then there were too many references that I liked too much to cut out, so. yeah. so much for having my head in the game... /sigh
> 
> be sure to subscribe to the series if you're interested in more content from this AU! next up is probably either Michael's backstory or Janet and Jason's. I'm taking a break from fanfic until the semester starts back up again to focus on submissions, though, so don't expect them for at least that long. *\o/* let's go ~~wild~~ bobcats! *\o/*

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Book Cover for 'Clues On How To Stay' by Zedpm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909973) by [221b_ee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_ee/pseuds/221b_ee)




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